Yup, Ring Fit’s Adventure mode has a proper ending. The story of Ring and Dragaux concludes, and even supporting cast members get a resolution to their side stories. It’s all very wholesome, in trademark Nintendo style.
I played for 75 hours, spread over 100 sessions or so from May 2020 to May 2021. Thought I’d share my experience with this fitness game, in case you’re on the fence about buying it. I’ll end with what you can expect from the game after finishing it.
My Ring Fit Experience
Previously, we published a poll asking LadiesGamers readers about their Ring Fit experience. Here are my own answers:
Q: What is your age group? Before trying Ring Fit, did you exercise regularly? I’m in my early 30s and did light/moderate exercise once a week prior to buying Ring Fit. It was my husband who bought the game, in a bid to make me exercise more. I was sceptical. In the 2019 launch trailer, it all looked rather dorky.
Q: Was Ring Fit as fun as you expected? With such low expectations, the game turned out much more fun than I had thought. I liked the wide variety of exercises in both combat and the jogging courses. The enemies were cute and their names were nice puns, so that helped to offset the toil of combat.
Q: Is it an effective exercise tool for you? Yes. With exercise, two big issues are often sustaining motivation and having the right level of challenge. The game helped with both.
I was motivated to play it because of the developing plot (slow as it was), cute monsters, fun minigames, and mix between predetermined and freely chosen exercises.
After the initial novelty wore off in a month, I stopped playing/exercising regularly. But when I went through quarantine (twice) and lockdown (a few times), played Ring Fit every other day. So, the game was effective enough to get me going for a while, but afterward it took Covid-19 restrictions to sustain longer play.
Ring Fit: The Pros
The difficulty level can be adjusted. This helped when I had gotten out of shape, or when I was playing it regularly but needed more challenge.
Over the course of a year, I gradually increased the difficulty level from 12 to 22 (the maximum is 30). So I must have improved in fitness! During this time, I didn’t engage in any other exercise but light walking. So the improvement was thanks to Ring Fit. When I started on Flutter Kick, I could only do 10 reps before my abs needed a holiday. Now I can do 40! I also improved somewhat in my weakest muscle, the triceps, thanks to Tricep Kickback.
Ring Fit offers tons of strength exercises. That’s another reason I found it a useful fitness game, because I wouldn’t otherwise be motivated to do strength exercises. It’s easier to stick with a challenging set of reps when I’m preoccupied with pummeling the one-eyed Gobhoplin, half-distracted from the aching muscles.
When otherwise-tough routines are gamified and designed into a balanced program, it helps lazy folks like me to challenge themselves. In between intense bits, I could also relax with light cardio and flexibility/balance exercises.
The game has a good variety of exercises, called Fit Skills. During combat, you can choose from a growing selection of Fit Skills (though it takes time to unlock new ones). If you want to avoid exercises you hate, go ahead and just do the ones you love! I was terrible at Arm exercises, so I did more Leg, Ab, and Yoga ones.
Ring Fit: The Cons
Still, the jogging course has mandatory exercises you can’t avoid, unless you turn on Assist Mode. It enables you to perform exercises by simply pressing a button.
But beware: assist mode doesn’t work during combat! While it’s great that Nintendo thought to include this feature, people with physical difficulties may still struggle to find the game fun or even playable. (See these blog posts on Shoulder Assist and Knee Assist.)
If you have mobility or pain issues, Ring Fit may not be the right tool for you.
While I don’t have mobility issues, certain Arm exercises were very tough for me, especially Overhead Pull, Overhead Press, and Aerochute. Sometimes, even Front Press got impossibly punishing when I had to push a crate uphill.
Fitness fanatics will find the game a good challenge. But if you like tracking statistics, don’t expect accurate ones here. The Ring Con isn’t great at counting heart rate, and I suspect the calorie tracker is off too.
At least the game timer is alright; it pauses when you stop performing the right movement. The game also helpfully tells you how many minutes a jogging course might take.
My average sessions were 15 to 20 minutes long. The game is well-designed for short play and manageable sessions. It’s great in this regard, though I was rather impatient with smoothie-making, which has unnecessarily long animations. You don’t have to make smoothies, but I did because I drank them often in combat. Very clever that you have to squeeze the Ring Con to create smoothies, but I wish the animations were shorter or skippable.
After Finishing Ring Fit
Technically, I haven’t finished the entirety of Ring Fit’s Adventure mode—just the “Main Fitness” campaign of 23 worlds. For those unfamiliar with the game, each world has roughly ten levels (jogging courses with various exercises).
Subsequent campaigns, “Extra Fitness” and “Fitness Master,” aren’t advertised but they’re there for hardcore players to discover. Each repeats the 23 worlds but makes enemies tougher and doesn’t have sub-quests. Apparently the dialogue is different, too. On top of that, Extra Fitness adds a new set of clothes called Dragon Breaker (which look terrible, IMO), while Fitness Master unlocks Level 4 skills.
What’s nice is that your level, accumulated Fit Skills, smoothies, and all your gear get carried forward.
Q: Have you stopped playing? Are you motivated to keep playing?
Having just discovered this small incentive to keep playing, I might return to Ring Fit. I don’t really feel like going through the same content again, but maybe the added challenge will motivate me. We’ll see.
It depends, too, on my Ring-Con. After one year of use (or 140+ hours across all users), “failed to read” errors have now popped up several times, in which the system has trouble detecting the Ring Con. On the bright side, the Ring Con hasn’t broken! I can’t vouch for its circuitry, but I can tell you this ring’s pretty tough. Nintendo says, “The Ring-Con is light yet strong thanks to the use of fiber-glass reinforced plastics in its spring. This same material is also used for aircraft and ships” (translated from Japanese by NintendoSoup).
Overall, Ring Fit Adventure is as fun a fitness game as I can imagine. I would recommend it with two caveats: First, if you have a physical disability or mobility issue, this might not be the best workout method. Second, Ring Fit’s fun enough to challenge you to harder workouts, but it won’t magically make you disciplined—nothing can do that!