Horrible gameplay overall, the game engine actually cannot react quick enough to the ability of your opponent, so unless you time your movement by the millisecond you will likely be fighting the rigid character movement and reactions whilst attempting to return near perfectly placed shots from the CPU. I tried this game in Easy mode and only then do the CPU return shots which are relatively manageable to play against, Normal difficulty Mode is like playing Federer in real life, every shot will be a power shot and you will be forced to be as agile and skilled as possible to return every shot, even then you are in defensive and very rarely feel like you are in control of a rally, or even keep a rally going, and if every shot is a winner it does not make for a fun flowing tennis game. The graphics are also very average and animations are quite poor, the previous gen Tennis games animate much better than this, yes there are subtle animations which look current gen but this makes no difference if the overall presentation is poor. I don't understand how you can take a simple premise such as Tennis and turn it into a boring and frustrating slog ****, there is absolutely no character or soul in this game whatsoever and comes across as just a corporate cash grab looking to fill a space in the market.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I played this game shortly for the PS5 while visiting my parents, free for Ps-plus, what I can say based on experience is just how daunting and frustrating it is to play. Before you go into the menu, you are already greeted by lootpacks, called Wildcards. Even if you never intend on playing online. I thought, since this is a simulation, I should get some practice, Tennis school, basic training, what a joy to get used to, the default setting turns the camera to the tv, similar to that of real tennis show, downside, it’s impossible to see. If you think the gameplay. Instructions don’t tell you much how to properly play, they’ll tell you what to press, but once you get to specific target, you’ll feel confused why using the L-stick doesn’t direct your ball where your moving it, due to the lack of directions on the UI. But once you get that figured out, you have to predict where the ball goes, which seems to be an impossible task. But I managed, so I move over to exhibition, random player, random field, random elements, set to go, I made sure to disable wild-cards because I don’t know why that’s a thing for a single player exhibition matches. Perhaps I regret it too much as now it feels impossible to play, despite changing settings, this game feels fairly cheap, like it was designed by EA, even EA makes sure the game is somewhat playable, this doesn’t. Heres my advice from experience, get yourself a tennis racket and play real life tennis, you will find much more ease and joy than you would ever playing this game.