Let's begin our YMMV troping. You won't need the Ring-Con.
Be mindful of your body, and trope within the range of your ability.
Be mindful of your body, and trope within the range of your ability.
- Accidental Innuendo: Sometimes after fairly extraneous workout periods, Ring will comment on how sweaty you presumably are. Some of their lines seem less like praise and encouragement and more like they're very excited by your perspiration to say the least.
- And You Thought It Would Fail:
- While the game was laughed at prior to release for its unusual peripheral and the bizarre mashup of RPG gameplay and fitness, many have been shocked to see that it's not only functional but incredibly fun, with some people even calling for the player character's inclusion as DLC in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. And then there's its powerful legs when it comes to sales. This was further vindicated when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, making many have to find ways to stay in shape without leaving their homes, and this game was sold out everywhere for months.
- It probably helps that the game is billed primarily as a video game first and foremost with a proper story and gameplay, instead of just being exercises using motion controls like Wii Fit and such.
- Awesome Music: The soundtrack ranges from adrenaline pumping battle themes to soothing and atmospheric level themes, providing lots of ear candy while you work out. In particular, the final boss theme
wouldn't look out of place in any traditional RPG. - Demonic Spiders: Megaphaunas hit surprisingly hard even when you perform a successful ab guard, can buff the stats of their fellow enemies, and can even summon enemies you've already defeated in battle, effectively reviving them. Even worse is that they can rarely summon Rare or Gold Hoplins, so if you target them first before other enemies (which you likely will), you'll likely miss out on a lot of EXP and money.
- Draco in Leather Pants: According to Nintendo, Dragaux is an overly competitive Jerk Jock that represents the worst parts of gym culture. According to a lot of Dragaux's fans, Dragaux is just a softie who wants you to exercise; if anything, the protagonist is the real villain who does not let Dragaux exercise in peace! Vindicated in the ending, as he ends up being a lovable guy after freeing him from his dark influence.
- Game-Breaker: Setting the difficulty to the highest level, while exploiting the movements of the joy-con and ring-con to make much less movement. Not only do you get the most experience possible by having it at the highest difficulty, but you can go through worlds with less of a workout. Combined that with using smoothies that doubles items or experience and you can breeze through the game without spending much money in the store. Additionally, you will be gaining more experience faster than the upcoming courses recommend, meaning you should be able to beat the courses with ease. Oh, and go ahead and ignore the warnings signs of "taking a break" when you aren't really "working out by design".
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game is extremely popular in Asian countries besides Japan, such as: South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
- Just Here for Godzilla: There's a significant crowd that only knows anything about this game because of Dragaux.
- LGBT Fanbase: Dragaux's muscular physique and personality has made him popular with gay men. The male protagonist's clean and refined build is also worth noting.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Fans making plenty of jokes about the "speedruns" for the entire game.
- Due to the game's surprisingly intense exercise routines, many joke about the game leaving them exhausted, KO'ing or outright killing them after every session.
- "Your sweat is so shiny and beautiful!" Explanation
- Memetic Psychopath: Thanks to a combination of the minimalistic house set and the hosts' bizarre expressions, the live-action Western advertisement for the game immediately led to numerous good-natured memes about them being a front for some kind of cult or (the male host in particular) being a psychopathic ax murderer. Comparisons to an episode of Black Mirror were not uncommon either.
- Most Wonderful Sound:
- The little jingle that plays when you S-Rank a mini-game.
- The sound that the robots play when you get 100 pts on an exercise. Hearing it repeatedly is very satisfying.
- Popular with Furries: Furries immediately descended on this game like a horde of fluffy, cute locusts the moment that images of the buff, tall, skimpily-dressed Dragaux were revealed.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- The game really tends to repeat its tutorials if the player hasn't played the game for two days in a row. Which is a commonplace occurrence for a lot of people. It's at its worst during the deluge of gym minigames.
- Flying. Not only is it incredibly hard to control, but some parts require you to flap as quickly as possible in parts where the wind blows very hard. These sections also take forever to get through.
- The gym minigames can be this for those who want to focus on the main adventure, as they tend to deviate from it and are chock-full of sidequests that require repeated playthroughs with arbitrary conditions.
- The game rolls over to the next day at 4:00 AM, and if you happen to be in the middle of playing (e.g. you're nocturnal or start your day very early, and that's the only time you can play), it will unceremoniously boot you back to the main menu.
- Scrappy Weapon:
- The exercises that have positions where the player cannot see the screen (such as Mountain Climber and the various planks) tend to be the most unreliable and prone to making mistakes, thus dealing less damage by not doing the moves perfectly or faulty motion detection. The Mountain Climber, despite being the strongest Lv 3 hit-all attack, may sometimes not properly detect, even if you accidentally hit the Joy-Con to your chest; this causes people to simply cheat the movement to do maximum damage.
- The healing moves are a downplayed version. While they do work and can recover a lot of health, they take up a valuable slot for another damaging move, and tend to have long recharge times. Smoothies can restore much more health and don't take up a turn or need a recharge. About the only reasons you'd want to use the healing moves are either if you aren't able to make or buy smoothies or if just want to do the exercises for the hell of it.
- Self-Fanservice: Some fan artists turn Dragaux's hand puppet/trash can lid face into a more conventional snout.
- That One Level:
- Dragaux Stadium 1 causes some people who are new to fitness to feel sick due to Dragaux's high health.
- Dragaux Stadium 5 has 100 seconds of held squats. On top of that, Dragaux is accompanied by four Matta Rays that need to be defeated before you target the steroid dragon himself, unless you want to prolong his boss battle to ridiculous lengths.
- Dragaux Stadium 20 has a block that needs to be ring pressed 30 times. The block is on a hill that undoes the presses if you stop for even a second before it reaches the top. Then there are two more of the blocks. Some people can't even make it to Dragaux their first time in the stage.
- That One Sidequest:
- One quest involves collecting every token in Dreadmill. The problem is Dreadmill is one of the hardest minigames to play because controlling your speed is very difficult, the tokens come in rows that require you to maintain a certain speed, and you have to time your jumps just right to collect the airborne tokens. Not to mention that the ring-con can become unresponsive even when being pointed down, which is required for jumping, resulting in missed coins and/or hitting bombs.
- The Smack Back mission, where you're required to play a perfect game. Mistime a swing or don't hit the disc hard enough, then the mission is failed.
- One of the Gluting Gallery missions requires you to complete a game with at least a certain score without hitting a single gold token. While the denial of the gold token points is bad enough, the tokens have a wonky hitbox that seems to be overly generous and requires the player to make extreme leans to either side. Touch one gold token and you have to start all over.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: This game is another example of how powerful the Switch's hardware can be for such a small system, with gorgeous vistas as you move through the levels and a very pleasing artstyle.
And your troping is complete. Good job!
