For years, Nintendo has tried to gamify exercise, and to varying degrees of success. The most significant way Nintendo has tried to turn exercise into a game is through Wii Fit and its balance board, which have yet to make the transition to the Switch. While a new Wii Fit game could very well make its way to the Switch one day, it would seem pointless in the face of Nintendo's latest "exergame" experiment, Ring Fit Adventure, which adds a lot more "game" to the equation with great results.

First and foremost, Ring Fit Adventure is legitimate exercise. Depending on what difficulty level players select and how long they play, they will likely be exhausted after a session with the game. Ring Fit Adventure is a great cardio workout and while it won't replace going to the gym and lifting weights, it also offers some solid strength training as well. With Ring Fit Adventure, Nintendo has finally succeeded in the gamification of exercise, delivering an experience that has a lot more depth than its predecessors.

The main game mode in Ring Fit Adventure is its story mode, which is a rather sprawling adventure with over 100 levels for players to complete. And since playing Ring Fit Adventure requires genuine exercise on the part of the player, they won't be able to just blow through it in one or two play sessions. On the contrary, this is a game that's going to take weeks to fully complete for most people, and that is part of its design.

Ring Fit Adventure keeps track of players' exercise stats each day, monitoring how many of each exercise they did and how long they exercised for. It can even keep track of players' heart rates using the Joy-Cons, which seems like an idea that would have originated with the canceled Wii Vitality Sensor peripheral. This way, players can see how well they're doing and make realistic goals for themselves to improve.

A roadblock that many people may hit when trying to exercise more is that they may get bored doing the exercises. Ring Fit Adventure's story mode successfully gamifies exercises like squats, yoga poses, jogging, and more so that it's more compelling for people who may not usually like to exercise. The game plays like an on-rails shooter of sorts, though players have to move their character through the determined path by physically jogging in place. What's neat is that the speed at which players are running in the real world directly dictates how fast their on-screen avatar is moving. And if players happen to live in an apartment and have downstairs neighbors they don't want to disturb, there's even a quiet option that replaces the jogging with squats.

While moving through the Ring Fit Adventure levels, players are encouraged to shoot things around them with their Ring-Con by aiming it and squeezing it in. Alternatively, players can suck in coins and other items by pulling the Ring-Con apart. The Ring-Con itself is extremely sturdy and resistant enough to really work one's arm muscles, so between that and having to jog through the levels, players will be getting a serious workout in before they even get to any of the battles.

The most physically taxing parts of Ring Fit Adventure are the turn-based battles. Like an old-school JRPG, Ring Fit Adventure has players battling a variety of monsters by selecting attacks from a list. The difference is that each attack in Ring Fit Adventure requires players to perform an exercise for them to pull it off. For example, players have to perform 25 squats to do an attack, with the game making sure that players hold the squats long enough for them to really be effective. Players will really start feeling it when they have to fight multiple monsters in a level and they find themselves doing over 100 squats in a single play session.

By beating monsters in Ring Fit Adventure's story mode, players level up like they would in a typical JRPG. They're rewarded with stat increases, new customization options for their avatar, and new exercises that they can use to unleash attacks on their enemies. The longer Ring Fit Adventure's story mode goes on, the more exercise options that are available to the player, so the game becomes increasingly less repetitive and more fun the longer it goes.

When players are done with Ring Fit Adventure's story mode, they can turn their attention to some of the other game modes that are on offer. There's a set of fun mini-games to play that, while not too deep, can make Ring Fit Adventure play more like a party game. Players can also create their own playlists of exercises and activities to do that helps them customize their exercise sessions how they want just in case they don't want to bother with story mode or just want to play specific mini-games every time.

Ring Fit Adventure has a wealth of content and despite being an exercise game, it honestly has more to it than some more traditional video game experiences today. Out of all the Nintendo Quality of Life initiatives so far, it's easily the best one. However, the game is not perfect, with the main issue stemming from the sometimes unreliable motion controls.

During our time with Ring Fit Adventure, we found that the Ring-Con worked well when doing exercises, but using it to scroll through menu options like the game wants is unreliable at best. The leg strap Joy-Con, meanwhile, will always slide down the player's leg during extended play sessions, forcing them to stop exercising and readjust the strap. The leg Joy-Con in general is a bit hit or miss when it comes to properly reading what the player is doing; there were a few times where it wanted us to practically sit on the floor before it would count a squat. These issues were fixed with some adjustments, but they still disrupted the flow of our workouts.

Overall, these issues were minor in the grand scheme of things. Ring Fit Adventure is the most fun players can have doing these exercises, and it's the rare game that is great as both a video game and an exercise tool. It's the best exercise game since the now-defunct Xbox Fitness for the Xbox One Kinect and blows Nintendo's previous exercise games out of the water. It may be a little pricey at $79.99, but anyone looking for a way to make their daily exercises a little more engaging should definitely give it a look.

Ring Fit Adventure is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.