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Friday, January 10, 2020

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 9: Double Jumping!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The game is shifting difficulty away from combat.

Welcome to the second KoopaTV Fitness Friday of 2020! Click here for an explanation for what is a fitness log and why I'm doing them. Essentially, I'm doing a playthrough of Ring Fit Adventure as training for my Olympics performance later this year, and I'm documenting much of what happens during the game. That includes story spoilers. (Because I'm really happy the game has a story to spoil.) Let's get into it! (And note, I'm writing these throughout the week as they happen. They always start on Sunday.)

For the first time, I'm not beginning the week with a difficulty level increase. 27 seems high enough right now! Anyway, World 9 is called Flex Dojo. That scares me. I wonder if it'll be filled with gyms.

Apparently, Armando, the arms Master, set up the Flex Dojo and an entire village around it for the purpose of helping people train and become buff. The town has stories of people who were made fun of as children, until they became the envy of their social scene by walking around with massive biceps. He also apparently built No-Brakes Mine, the first level of World 9, and there was a small black boy insulting our hairdo who is working or trespassing at the mine. Child labour, maybe? The whole mine consists of an overhead bend cart and overhead ring pull zipwire. Afterwards, Armando also set up the Flyover Wilds, which is guarded by an old man who also insulted our hairdo. I'm not really sure how he can create a wild area, but the whole thing has wildlife, no enemies, and a bunch of crates lying around for us to Ring Press. Perhaps Armando's contribution to nature is littering?

Ring Fit Adventure Flex Dojo blue hair boy teacher Armando No-Brakes Mine
You're a disgrace to all blue-haired boys out there, Boy.
You should learn from the blue-haired Lady back in World 6.

Already, after those two fast and painless levels, a request opened up in Town from Hubby, the General Store manager. He's asking where the “temp the agency sent” is. He needs a Papaya Soda to make a delivery, and he'll give two Emeralds for it. Conveniently, we discovered the Papaya Soda recipe in No-Brakes Mine, and found the ingredients in Flyover Wilds. Hm!

Now, a branching path. One to an expansive-looking warp zone, and the other to where Armando and the story are. Of course, we'll go for the diversion first! There's three ways here: One is I get to play Smack Back (Novice) and get 200 coins. The second is a Fitness Gym (my fear)... offering the Chest Set. Let's do that third. Next is an actual level, called Otherside Street, which for the first time this world, does feature enemies. It didn't feature any streets, though, unless it's Venice and rowing through a green river counts as a street. Otherside Street gave way to a treasure chest with FIVE Super Cress Smoothies, which should take care of all my healing needs for worlds to come.

Alright, Chest Set time. You know, there's no humans in these warp zones to tell me if Armando set up the Chest Set Fitness Gym, or if he's only behind all the stuff in the normal part of the world. Seems to be disconnected to the whole arms thing he has going on. The reward for getting a B rank or higher is the Russian Twist Fit Skill. I don't know what that involves, but it's an Abs (yellow) Fit Skill. And the four activities I must complete in succession are...

  1. Front Press x24: An Arms Fit Skill, where you have to press the Ring-Con in front of you. I guess you're graded by how long you can keep the Ring-Con pressed until it tells you to stop holding. These should all be easy 100 point ratings.
  2. Overhead Press x24: Another Arms Fit Skill. Same as Front Press, but squeeze the Ring-Con while it's above your head. This feels harder than holding it in front of you. Still, it's very simple enough and you can take your time in-between repetitions, and get simple 100 point ratings.
  3. Revolved Crescent Lunge Pose x20: This Yoga Fit Skill was a mainstay in my Fit Skill arsenal for several worlds. Fortunately, that means I know how to do it, and get 100 point ratings. The key is to stick to the form and go... slowly...
  4. Warrior Pose II x20: Another familiar Yoga Fit Skill that should be easy 100 point ratings. Just extend your legs and arms and rotate the arms as directed. If you're slow and steady, you'll do well.

I said every activity there should be easy to get 100 point ratings on. Add those all up, and this was the easiest Fitness Gym. I got a relatively stress-free S-rank, and unlocked the Russian Twist Fitness Skill (“Sit on the floor with legs bent, and twist your upper body left and right.” Features 130 base power and a five-enemy range.)

That actually made me feel pretty confident in myself and not exhausted as I was predicting, so now that we're done with the warp zone (...for now... there's a second one later in this world!) let's go deal with Armando. I expect a miniboss fight! I unlocked the Back Press Fit Skill from the skill tree (220 base power, one-enemy range, two-turn recharge... “Hold the Ring-Con behind your head and press in.”) in anticipation for an arms-based fight.

Armando Ring Fit Adventure World 9 Flex Dojo boss fight arms muscles
...You know, the more I look at this picture and try to think of a caption for it, the more I'm scared by the size of his muscles.
Let's move on.

To Arms-Race Gym! Armando has a giant glowing orb, which Ring says is one of his powers. Armando says the time for words is over, and now the muscles will do the talking. (Timely, given the state of international relations on Earth.) I start by drinking a Strawberry Smoothie to increase my arms power, and let loose with the Back Press! And it's... actually quite a work-out. You literally are holding the Ring-Con in back of your head (vertically) and pressing in and out. I guess having your arms reach all the way back there increases the potency of the workout? The Front Press training helped, since that was the counter-measure to Armando's super-move arm energy blast, which ended up punching him in the face upon me successfully resisting it.

Beating Armando muted his muscles (making diplomacy an option again?) got us the JUMP BOOST power for Ring, which is... giving us the ability to double jump, a crucial skill for any character trying to come into the Super Smash Bros. series.

Ring Fit Adventure double jump higher boost
The only use this actually has is higher elevation, but getting back to a stage after being knocked off is a great alternative use.
I wonder what other game series one could take advantage of that in... (Well, see the preceding paragraph.)

Dragaux is very unhappy that Armando let us have double-jumping, and so he's going to punish Armando's carefully-built training country by infesting it with monsters. Ah hah, a story-line reason for why the earlier levels had no monsters! Anyway, my arms are EXHAUSTED, so that's all for today (Sunday).

Ring Fit Adventure Dragaux Armando nice training area Flex Dojo threat
The game really wants you to wonder why Dragaux is treating Armando this way.


On Monday I was way too busy arguing with my staff about KoopaTV's Game of THAT Year 2019 awards, but I was thinking about Dragaux and Ring Fit Adventure all night as I was gushing about how Lord Dragaux is the Best New Character of 2019! That's actually really motivating me to want to play the game, so let's skip to Tuesday...

There's a boy who wants me to run through Otherside Street in 150 seconds, which I'll equip the speed-boosting Street Runner set for. ...It's still not a street, though. I got to try double-jumping for the first time, and it's... a pretty minor boost in height, quite frankly. Still, the kid got me a scrumptious and life-saving Peach Yogurt. Meanwhile, the local chest Fitness Gym is having a promotion for Shadow Jogger pants if I can clear it with an average of 90 points or more. I know I can! These pants have a significant defence boost, but by now I'm realising that there isn't really a threat of me actually dying, so going for the most attack power I can get is the best choice.

In Beltline Tower, Ring tells me to practice double-jumping, and outright tells me to try double-jumping over enemies. ...And somehow I fail the timing and see my first Gobhoplin, all by itself. I figure it's the buffed version of a normal Hoplin. But in the next group of enemies, a whole four-pack, I jumped over them properly. Later, Ring states that double-jumping over enemies isn't as simple as it theoretically seems, and he really wants to encourage me to avoid conflict and avoid “disturbing” them. What is this, Undertale? Well, it will get me through more levels in a faster time if I can just avoid all the enemies, and for now, I'm already over-leveled...

Ring Fit Adventure jump over monsters Beltline Tower
Just last week I thought jumping over monster battles was considered a form of cheating.
But it's actually intentional AND encouraged.

Fortunately, we can still get experience points just from running through the course. And doing the Game Gyms! Speaking of which, here's a brand-new minigame: Dreadmill (Novice). There's a treadmill of five positions (base, 1, 2, 3, and 4) and bombs or tokens come from the background to the foreground in one of the non-base positions. You need to run in place, faster, or slower to get to the right position to collect the tokens. You'll also need to jump (and double-jump) to collect tokens in the air. I got an A rank on my first try, 7700 points.

Back in the town, an old man tells me “Training is everything!” and is offering me 400 coins if I can defeat 2 Red Belldogs. Where do I find these? “Near the village.” The game tells me to come back to him when I've completed the request. ...Well... um... I guess I'll keep playing as normal until I eventually encounter those? Which means going back to the warp zone... I did say there's a second one. There is a Game Gym for Bootstrap Tower (Novice) where I do worse than the first time I played that. It's guarding another level, Otherside Waterway. I bet this one will be a street. ...Annnd it's not. You're running in ankle-deep water, pretty much, for most of it. The enemy placement makes them easy to jump over, but I'm on a hunt for Red Belldogs. In fact, I found one, among a group of... five enemies. Completing the Waterway got me access to chia seed recipes, which let me make Chia-Seed Smoothies and Chia-Seed Sodas, which give the battle effect of “extra turn.” So if I drink one, I get two turns in a row? That's broken. Unfortunately, chia seeds seem very rare. Still, the game is giving me what I need to not only be able to avoid combat, but if I do get into it, I can just cheese through it with items.

Still, gotta find one more Red Bulldog, so I can't avoid all the fights. Next level... Pushpull Shrine! Not only do I encounter another Red Bulldog here, but there's a brand-new level mechanic here. There's these big blocks in the road. If you push the Ring-Con in, it pushes the block forward. If you pull the Ring-Con out, it pulls the block backwards. You want to pay attention to the terrain and choose appropriately because there tends to be block-shaped craters in the ground where the blocks should end up. It's basically an on-rails The Legend of Zelda. However, later on the level, the game wants you to push the block ahead of you, double-jump on it, and then use that as a platform to access an even higher platform that contains treasure chests of... I'm not sure. I kind of failed the puzzles, personally. But I'm excited that Ring Fit Adventure is utilising new mechanics to make you look at the also-new double jump mechanic in a different way. If I can skip most enemy fights now, the game is making an effort to make the parts of the levels between the fights engaging as well!

After skipping Wednesday due to some personal problems, on Thursday night I battled two Silver Hoplins (experience-givers) though I don't have the carrots required for the experience-doubling Carrot Soup. That unlocked the Squattery Wheel (Novice) Game Gym, which was my bane before, but I actually got 92 points on it (an A-rank). I discovered it's easier if you're not constantly pushing in on the clay, and actually sit and deliberate on what to do next. Finishing that immediately led to a town request from the Game Gym Counter to get at least 65 points in 40 seconds in Squattery Wheel. Took me only two tries! For some reason, my scores can be all over the place for this.

The only thing left to do now is raid Dragaux Stadium, which recommends me to be level 68. I'm level 77. I'm feeling confident! Ring is upset that Dragaux would infest Armando's training country with monsters just as punishment for failing to beat us. Meanwhile, Dragaux asks about the gym that he and Ring frequented. APPARENTLY, Ring's first love was the instructor! Oooh! But he cried about how she was an impossible love, and Dragaux asks if sobbing helps work your abs. Ha!

Ring Fit Adventure Dragaux Flex Dojo gym spent time getting into shape handstand
Dragaux's intimidating glare and trolling random thought aside, can we admire his perfect form as he's doing a handstand?

For the first time in... a really long time, it's just us vs. Dragaux with no minions by his side. Is that a testament to the game giving up on difficult combat? This time, Dragaux actually had TWO super angry moves. One was throwing giant boulders at us, which we've encountered before. A few Ring Presses and they're broken and sometimes give hearts. But his last super move? He breathed several FIRE BALLS at us. We still had to Ring Press to shoot out air to blow out the fire, but he shot out many at a time. ...Though there was still never any lethal threat.

Dragaux, feeling defeated, flew away. Meanwhile, Ring was very upset about Dragaux bringing up his past and his failed love attempt, while Armando announced that he would use the monsters all over Flex Dojo as exercise equipment. Well, I still have plenty of energy, so let's do the requests that opened up.

In Bootstrap Tower, I'm asked to “Collect all of the score tokens, and clear the course!” Sounds like it wants me to get another perfect score. There's no time limit for this challenge, but it does mean if I mistime a jump and the platform I'm attached to keeps moving on, I have to restart from the beginning. Unfortunately, the timing of the motion is unlike anything in the game (hold the Ring-Con at shoulder level, push it in, and thrust it down your body) so that messes up the timing in-game. Eventually, after 125 Swing Climbers (at 13900 points) I got a perfect. My arms are super sore now. 

On Friday, a man with glasses asked if I knew about the rumour of Beltline Tower. Rumours, eh? Does this game have lore after all? He says if I jump over all of the monsters in Beltline Tower, all of my wishes will come true! Once I went and did that jumping, the man was amazed, then said the rumour was a lie. He did give me 400 coins, though. ...I'd like all my wishes to come true, though...

The next request is to “Collect all of the score tokens, and clear the course!” in Dreadmill for a Strength Drink. This... took intense effort to do. After dashing for 2,737.4 yards and jogging for 2,197.0 yards for abut 19 in-game minutes, I collected all the tokens! A perfect score in Dreadmill (Novice) is 9000 points, but you don't need to get a perfect score—in other words, you can hit bombs and still pass the mission, as long as you get all the tokens. The collision detection is actually quite generous. If you're in-between two of the lanes, you'll collect everything on the two lanes you're between, including bomb hits. Bombs don't flinch you or anything, so you can keep running as-is and still collect. When you jump, you stay exactly in the same horizontal spot. You don't go backwards or forwards. There is no momentum carried when you jump.


Next mission? Break all the robots in Smack Back (Novice). That's right. The same damn hellhole perfect-score mission from Week 7. Ring Fit Adventure is literally telling me to do “do everything in a minigame!” for two requests in a row. I literally yelled an explicitive when I saw that request. Still, I managed to do it in much less time than two weeks ago, and got three Chia-Seed Smoothies, each giving me an extra turn per drink in battle.

There's one more request in the world according to the Select World menu, but I can't access it now. Guess I'm done with World 9!

Ring Fit Adventure Exercise Log Week World 9 Dreadmill distance traveled miles
That's the most distance traveled yet, and it's pretty much all failed Dreadmill attempts.(Plus a successful one.)

World 10 looks like it'll be nothing but minigames. ...Ugggh. 


Ludwig was scared that the world dedicated to arms would have a reference to the game ARMS. It did not. Stay tuned for next week's KoopaTV Fitness Friday to read about Ludwig suffering through all of the Game Gyms.


How did Ludwig do in the next world of minigames? Check out Week 10 here!
We return to the Flex Dojo in World 32. This features a screenshot of Dragaux's fire, too!

4 comments :

  1. Not a fan of minigames, huh? Guessing you don't really play any Mario Party games.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like most of the minigames in Ring Fit Adventure, but I DON'T like the subsequent request challenges from the town that ask me to get a perfect damn score on them.

      Delete
  2. Thanks! There are not a lot of play-throughs on RingFit Trainer out there, and my middle school son is using Ringfit to keep active during the pandemic. The Red Belldogs thing quest was bugging him!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're welcome, and thank you for the comment!

      Yeah, I definitely recommend Ring Fit Adventure during a time where it's discouraged to roam in gyms and public places, though it's also fun without a pandemic, too.

      Delete

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