Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 3: The Kingdom of Sporta

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Most of the Kingdom of Sporta, anyway.

My scaly wrists are feeling pretty sore typing this out, but yes, it's our third edition of KoopaTV's Fitness Log Fridays.

This goes through Days 9, 10, 11, and 12 of Ring Fit Adventure, and according to the in-game exercise log (reproduced at the end), I've played it for longer and more intensely than Week 1 and Week 2! I'm going to tell you my impressions as I'm playing Ring Fit Adventure, the good and the bad, and the play-by-play through this very unique role-playing game.

Starting Monday night at World 4: The Nation of Sporta. I had the difficulty level set up to 19 for the week, to continue to challenge myself and look impressive to the folks I'm about to spend my week with. You see, Sporta is no mere nation. It is a kingdom, full of buff, fit, muscular people. They wish to fight back against Dragaux, who has done little more than fly in. I'm tasked by the local Sportan Commander to scout out the Sportan Waters. There's actually all sorts of collectibles here that you can Ring Pull, like wildly growing strawberries. But we're stopped by a non-traversable river.

So we must stop by the Sportan Swamp to train our legs so we can just run across the river, like all Sportans can do. Along the way, General Store 2 opened up and THEY SELL MILK. Unfortunately, my right Joy-Con began having connection issues so I had to shut off my Switch and turn it back on to resolve those. Hope those are rare.

Unfortunately, Milk isn't drinkable during battle on its own, unlike smoothies. It's just an ingredient.
I guess I'll just have to drink milk in real life while playing the game.

The Swamp has these crows named Robbins that cause a chase scene in the swamp, which one must quickly knee-lift to go through. We passed this trial. Onto the next... well, no, it's midnight already. More later. 

I don't know what happens if they actually catch up to you.
This was a pretty good incentive to run, though!

The first thing we do on Tuesday is get awarded with having turned the game on for... TEN days! Yay! And then there's the Crate Crasher (novice) game gym. Crate Crasher is basically the Barrel Batter minigame from Mario Superstar Baseball, which is the minigame from hell. Except this time, it's controlled by angling Ring Presses well. Ehhhhhh. I got a B rank here and moved on to Sporta Bridge, where I must collect 15 Muscle Eggs. The key gimmick here is that there's no enemies, but there's a lot of pulling on the ring to suck in the eggs, as well as snapping to a giant zip line.

At this point, the Sportan Commander has gone from calling me Tiny to calling me Rookie, impressed by my feats. But the next stop is Dojo Sporta, where I have to defeat every monster there.

But you know what's more difficult than beating monsters? Well, at level 20, I acquired the Plank Fit Skill. Planks. ...Are extremely difficult. You aren't supposed to look at the screen while doing them, having to memorise the form you should be using, and knowing when to lower or raise yourself based on sound cues. They're identifiable enough, but there is tremendous incentive to cheat while doing Planks by just moving the leg with the Leg Strap up and down, because you don't see the visual feedback (damage being dealt with a number associated with it, and seeing the HP bars of the monsters decrease) of your Planks like you would with any other Fit Skill. I managed to finish the Dojo and got ranked up to Ace, but I'm permanently retiring Planks.

The next time we play, we must run through the Sporta Highway to the Sporta Treasury. There's a secret skill there, but a monster has gotten hold of it!

The next time wasn't Wednesday night, because I had a procrastinative predicament. I haven't quite worked out the proper order of playing Ring Fit Adventure, taking a shower, and eating. ...Therefore, I did none of those things for the entire Wednesday. I felt bad about it, hence all the Ring Fit Adventure references in Wednesday's article.

Thursday morning I woke up starving, so I had a light breakfast (gluten-free toast and milk) and went to play Ring Fit Adventure. To the Sporta Highway! This features the Overhead Side Bend rail cart of doom, where you need to swap between the three tracks (bend left, don't bend, bend right) to collect things like fleeing EXP Medals, or you'll hit walls. ...I did a lot of wall-hitting, since it's the same overhead side bend issue with the Gluting Gallery minigame from week 2.

After completing that, there's a branch point between a warp zone and the Sporta Treasury. I decided to head to the warp zone... which is Dragaux's SECRET fortress of treasure! Dragaux's secret fortess contains the Core Crushing Game Gym, which is physically painful and consists of doing an abdominal press and twisting your hips in order to swing a giant bat to swat robots. You need to swat in the correct direction because the robots have left or right shields, really making it The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The treasure chest accessible from completing that? The Overhead Bend Fit Skill. That's basically doing 20 Japanese full-body bows in a row, which is exhausting, but it's the strongest Fit Skill yet (yellow, single-target, 80 damage). The level here? Out-of-the-Way Way, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the first level but with a Dragaux “dark influence” colour scheme (purple sky, green water, scarier music) and tough baddies. Still, if that's how bad dark influence can get, that doesn't seem that objectionable that we have to chase Dragaux everywhere. 

I got to level 23, which gives me the also-80-power Thigh Press, which I'll have in my arsenal instead of Overhead Bend. Haven't gotten to try it yet. Dragaux was also hiding in his treasure trove the recipe for... MILK PUDDING. It's rich in calcium, and helps you do jogging and knee lifts easier for the course, being our first course buff as opposed to battle buff.

That's enough for Thursday. Next up is the Sporta Treasury and then Dragaux himself!

I didn't expect the first thing I'd see at Sporta Treasury to be Ring Fit Adventure's first miniboss: the Red Stomper, surrounded by a Blue Hoplin+ and a non-coloured Hoplin. There weren't any recommended Fit Skill colours going into this level, so my red skills were weaker, multi-target hits and not targeted damage dealers. It was better to use the new Thigh Press (which is really easy—sit down, put the Ring-Con in-between your legs/knees, and keep pressing it in) than my Bow Pull multiplied by the Strawberry Smoothie. I beat it, and that was the whole level. The Red Stomper possessed the River Rowing special ability, so now I can finally cross the Sportan Waters! They recommend yellow stomach Fit Skills... so welcome back, Overhead Bend. Sigh...

FIRST MINIBOSS (with miniboss music): RED STOMPER.
By the way, I beat the two Hoplin minions first, and then Red Stomper resummoned them some turns later.
But if you beat Red Stomper, it knocks his minions out too, AND you get the experience points as if you beat the minions again.

How does one row? With the abdominal press & twist! But I don't really have to pay attention to robots this time. Just twist and twist. A lot easier. I even got to level 25, which got me a 5th heart container!

Now I can go right for Dragaux. OR, I can go to the town and fulfill requests. One of which was to give Hubby my Milk Pudding in return for pearls. ...I gave it to him and I never got the milk for myself, unfortunately. Another request is to head back to Out-of-the-Way Way and smash rocks. If I do that, I'll be too tired to face Dragaux and this week won't end with a Dragaux fight.

...So be it. I cleared the ten rocks and boulders and got money! Then I did the special gym challenge request of getting 2500 pounds in 30 seconds for the Core Crushing game gym. Last request? Go back to Sportan Waters and beat monsters there for some old man. I guess it'll get me a lot of experience points before fighting Dragaux. ...Well, I thought that'd be the last request. Before trying it, yet another one, from Master, appeared, wanting me to get 15000 points in 40 seconds in the Crate Crasher minigame. That's the one I compared to a bad minigame from Mario Superstar Baseball, and that score is more than what I got in 60 seconds. According to the world map picker, all of these Requests go into my completion percentage... so I gotta do them all eventually!

I did the Crate Crasher challenge successfully by calibrating my Ring-Con before the timer started, and actually aimed for the bombs in a logical and targeted way. I'm saving the other challenge and Dragaux for next week. Even Tipp said I exercised too much today! (And said if I want more of a challenge, to increase the difficulty rather than exercising forever.)

Obviously I need to better distribute my time exercising across my four days.
I could've beaten Dragaux by now if I did more on Monday and started playing earlier...

After that workout, I took a shower and weighed myself to... 139.4 pounds. Well, hey, that's progress.


Come back next week so you know how World 4 ends! ...And there'll certainly be a World 5. How far will Ludwig get in that? Please encourage the slowly-becoming-fit Koopaling in the comments section, and ask some Ring Fit Adventure questions. Or give some fitness tips. Ludwig could use those.


Ludwig concludes World 4 in... week 4!
Ludwig returns to Sporta in Week 27 of KoopaTV's Fitness Logs, in Extra Fitness mode!