Why does this game get flat-out ignored and why is it the best? I’m 70 days into this JRPG for the buttocks and it’s frustrating to have to mull over its design alone without seeing anyone saying anything about it. People are talking about it sure, in soggy feature articles where they suggest that it made them a bit fitter than their sedentary lifestyle normally allows. But where’s the discussion of progression, writing, music and the adaptation of such a bizarre control scheme to RPG mechanics and user interface?
Listen to these psychopaths get you up to speed on the premise:
Pros:
The sentient Ring (and only voiced character) is constantly screaming in your face because it wants you to get better. It IS your virtual coach, mentor and comic relief and ejaculates you through relentless fitness routines. Feedback is actually tailored to how well you’re doing in the current rep of an exercise, how well you did in the current rep compared to the previous rep of the exercise, how many reps are left to go, tips for posture, counts for time-sensitive reps and more. You can have it learn Dutch or Korean if you so choose. The Ring has a love interest that is abruptly raised and dropped in the same boss fight and then never mentioned for over 20 hours. How did the ring come to be in a relationship? Does it love a human or another ring entity? These questions will be answered if you keep exercising and there isn’t a better incentive.
Music changes depending on which muscle group is being exercised and it makes you feel like a your muscles control reality. Juicy Nintendo UX bursts out of every rep as your avatar literally catches fire the harder you squat.
The progression system has no right to be as good as it is. Exercises are unlocked by levelling or doing sidequests. However, a skill tree (and the concept of skill points) unlocks at level 40 because the game doesn’t trust your flabby ass with such important decisions until you actually commit to a Goddamn routine. You get through the skill tree and think ‘cool, I got all the exercises, what the fuck else is in this game?’. At level 100 a second ring of skills grows off of it. You are literally 45 days in at this point and this game is throwing harder decisions at you. Do I break the game with Extra Turn Chances or do I get that 2 star Ring Raise Combo that let’s me dance the dance of death on my enemies?
The same applies to level designs which still add new paradigms and mid-mission challenges well after 60 days into this game. There are actual JRPGs with less variety at the 40, 30 or 20 hour mark than Ring fucking Fit Adventure. Bootstrap climbing, a double jump, canoeing with your abs, flying (this one sucks) aren’t some early game shit. They are for the committed. Who walk (or jog) past the ‘the real Ring Fit starts here’ signs and take giant goofy rings into their own hands.
At one point a secondary villain gets fucked over by their magical robot that is cursed to only tell the truth because they wanted to know who had the hardest buttocks in existence. I’ll bet you didn’t think that was in this Nintendo game did you? Your ring will often tell you how beautiful and shiny your sweat is. Will your closest loved ones?
Fuck VR, squeezing a big old ring is the future.
Cons
Repetition. Except it’s not a con because this is fucking exercise. Where games often suck, going on way longer than they need to or consisting of rote manoeuvres, Ring Fit takes it and owns it as a huge plus to the experience. Combat consists of going through the same elements (or muscle groups) searching for enemy weaknesses and exercises that match the number and strength of enemies in front of you. This shit is SUPER repetitive but everything you do contributes to your ACTUAL fitness so why wouldn’t you do it? Making smoothies, opening chests, evading swarms of apparently lethal insects, shopping, sucking in coins, dressing up - all of it requires physical exercise. If Ring Fit Adventure was played on a regular controller you would tell it to roll down a hill. Strap on a joy-con and grasp your Ring and suddenly you are an addict for the worst qualities of other RPGs.
An actual con of the game is that asymmetrical exercises, that require one side of your body to exercise and then for you to change position to exercise the other half, should be more flexible. They almost always start with you exercising the left side and then the right. But if an enemy is on low health then you usually finish the exercise early because the enemy dies and you win. If I’ve only done tricep kickbacks on my left arm then the enemy dies, what, I ask you, is to happen to my right? If I come to another enemy I should be able to start tricep kickbacks with my right arm to satisfy my OCD need for balance but the game demands I start with the left every time. Did they even test this garbage?
In summary, Ring Fit Adventure is as fucking fantastic as it is weirdly sexual. I think it should be discussed as much as other video games.
