Tennis World Tour 2 from NACON is a sequel that improves on what its prequel did to give us a more rounded video game. Learn more in our Tennis World Tour 2 review!
the_nmac got a chance to review Tennis World Tour on PlayStation 4 a couple of years ago. He mentioned that as a first effort, it set a good foundation in place, but that there was certainly room for improvement. It’s now 2020, and NACON and Big Ant Studios are back with a sequel that sets out to improve on what its predecessor had to offer. You can take on exhibition matches, a tournament, play online, play Career Mode, or go to tennis school so that you can learn all of the basics so that you don’t embarrass yourself on the court.
While Tennis World Tour 2 includes 38 top tennis players – up from the 30 included for Tennis World Tour – you can also go into the My Player section to create and customize a player from scratch. The first step will be to select a male or female character, and you’ll then select between an athletic or muscular build, as well as pic their height. Height can be between 155 cm and 210 cm. The taller a player is, the better the boost to serve, but endurance will take a hit. If a player is shorter, then endurance gets a boost, but your serve will take a hit.
You can then customize your player by selecting from the different head, face, eye color, skin color, hair, and hair color options. After this, there are more options for customizing your player’s nose, cheeks, jaw, chin, mouth, eyes, eyebrows, and ears. Is your player a lefty or a righty? One-handed or two-handed backhand style? Classic, whip, or Nadal style? How will your player serve the ball? What stance will it have when receiving? What serve ritual is it going to have right before serving? Oh, and you can select the type of groan it will have when hitting a ball, or select if it will never do that – at all.
And once you’ve created your character and played around for a bit to level up, you’ll get to select from a ton of officially licensed equipment – Wilson, Babolat, Head, Yonex, Tecnifibre, Luxilon, Volt. You will get to select from licensed rackets, frames, strings, dampeners, grips, headwear, tops, arm wear, bottoms, socks, and footwear, and the more you play – and the higher your level – the more combinations options you will have!
Career Mode will have you making a ton of choices as you progress through the season. You can take on a tournament – as long as you have enough to pay for the entry fee – play in a charity event, do an exhibition match, train to complete a series of challenges that will reward you with experience points to level up your player, exercise to improve one of your stats, meet with your coach, hire an agent to receive boosts such as extra prize money or more experience points, or rest in order to lower your overall fatigue. You should check the calendar to see what events you can participate in during each month of the year so that you can start to plan for a path that will lead you to the top of the worldwide rankings.
The controls are easy to pick up, but they will all be about the right timing needed to hit the ball just right so that you can outsmart and outperform your opponent. You can move your player with the left analog stick and can hit the ball with the Square, Circle, Triangle, or X button. Once you’re committed to a swing, you can use the left analog stick to aim where you want to hit the ball. Since you’ll need to quickly move around the court, you’ll sometimes have to rush and sprint towards a ball, which can be done with the R2 button.
You can use either precise or power shots. Precise shots will be more centered, making them a weak but accurate option, so you’ll be relying on them for most of your time with Tennis World Tour 2. Power shots, as their name suggests, will be focusing on power, but will be less precise, which will make them more prone to errors due to poor timing. Precise shots are done by pressing one of the face buttons. For power shots, you’ll have to press and hold down a shot button, and the longer you keep that button pressed, the more powerful a shot will be.
Go into the Store section to use your gold coins – which are earned in-game – to purchase booster packs that will give you cards you can check out in your My Cards section or before starting a match to see which ones can be put to good use. What this means is that unlike other sports games you might have played on PlayStation 4, you won’t be spending any extra real-life money to purchase some extra in-game currency so that you can get the gold coins needed for buying extra packs.
When you first enter the Store section, you will get the chance to purchase a starter pack for zero gold coins that includes 30 cards as a one-time offer, so that you can get an idea of what to expect from this system. There will be silver and gold packs to purchase, and each type will let you know the odds of getting a silver, gold, or diamond card in said pack. You can get a single booster pack, or a 5, 15, or 25 card pack, with each set increasing your odds of getting better cards, or you can go for mega and hyper variants that have up to 50 cards, thus greatly boosting your odds of getting gold and diamond cards.
Cards will have different symbols, which will give you a heads-up on what effect they will have on your tennis player. If it has an S symbol, that means it’s a support card that will boost your player for the whole match, which is why you can only use one of them per match. There will also be dynamic cards that are stronger but last for a shorter time, so you’ll have to be sure you’re going to make the most of it! Cards will have an effect on your player’s endurance, power, precision, and agility, but they will also have extra effects that will change your overall performance as you hit each ball.
There have been plenty of improvements made over predecessor Tennis World Tour in this sequel, with more pro tennis players represented in the game, a wider variety of gameplay options, online play to take on players from around the world, and solid gameplay mechanics, all in a better package. The one area in which the game suffers is in the graphics department, since, other than the care given to the professional tennis players included in the game, the crowd looks like it’s from a PS3 game, as is the case for everyone else on the court who is not playing tennis.
Tennis World Tour 2 is available for a budget price of $39.99 on PlayStation 4. If you want to go a bit higher, $59.99 gets you the Tennis World Tour 2 Ace Edition, which includes the base game as well as the Season Pass, which gives you access to the Roland-Garros tournament with the Philippe-Chatrier, Suzanne-Lenglen, and Simonne-Mathieu stadiums, the main court of the Madrid Open, the Estadio Manolo Santana, the main court of the Halle Open, the OWL ARENA, and the Tie Break Tens tournament. More official players will be released at later dates.
Disclaimer
This Tennis World Tour 2 review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by NACON.
