I still don't know the difference between a topspin or a slice shot. But this game is so damn smooth to play. The N64 game was good, but it often felt very clunky with the way the charge mechanic worked. In this game every movement of mine felt perfectly executed as intended.
The game lacks any kind of story mode again, which is a bit of a bummer. More excusable on N64 imo, but by now I feel like we should be getting at least some sort of content beyond tournament mode. I may be able to live with tournament mode, if not for how god damn easy it is. I am not tooting my own horn - I will happily admit I lost a few games in the N64 version despite only playing to the regular tournament (not touching the 'special' cups) - in this game it's entirely possible to go through the Mushroom and Flower cup, aka 2/3rds of the tournament, without the opponent getting a single point. They're just that bad. It isn't until the final of the Star Cup that you face anything that could be considered above mentally impaired, and even they're unlikely to do more than get you to deuce on a good day.
Beat the tournament with a character and you once again unlock a harder tournament, this time it's the "Star Tournament". Named so because beating the Star Cup gives the character you won with a star rank, which can be toggled on or off. This supposedly improves the power of their shots. In the Star Tournament every enemy is in star rank, and supposedly the challenge in general is increased, though I couldn't really tell as it's still way too easy to get points in just a couple of hits after the ball has been served.
Beat the Star Tournament and you unlock Ace difficulty for exhibition mode. I tried this out and...yeah, this is an actual challenge from the game, at least for a bad player like me. So the whole purpose of tournament mode is basically to unlock a level of difficulty that can actually be fun, and only use it in the mode that exists for people to boot up when they're low on time or something.
There's also a Gimmick Cup this time around, named so because this game introduces new gimmick courses. The gimmicks on these fields range from mild nuisances like enemies on the field, to ones that change how you play because the shape and size of the field keeps changing. Or it could be the Piranha Plant goop one, which is utterly terrible.
These gimmick courses can be played without their gimmicks... but only in exhibition mode. In Tournament mode, non-gimmick cups will all be played in exclusively in the 3 Peach Dome fields, which are basically just normal-looking Tennis fields. You also need to unlock the gimmick fields for use in exhibition mode via winning the gimmick tournaments. I'm starting to feel like Nintendo really thought players would love to just spend hours upon hours playing matches on what is essentially the quick-play mode. Which I guess if you're playing with friends could be true. But for a single player experience that's generally used for practice and maybe warm-up exclusively.
The mini-games in this game are all top tier though. So many great ideas, and they're actually appropriately challenging too.
One aspect that did disappoint me was the character roster. Don't get me wrong, this is a perfectly fine roster, maybe even good by the standards of the time. But the first game has a roster that felt decently sized for an N64 game, and had so many wild card picks. This game removes some characters (Birdo, Baby Mario, Toad(?!) & Donkey Kong Jr.) and only adds 5, for a total of a net +1. The new choices aren't even that interesting, with Diddy Kong and Bowser Jr. just kinda been auto-includes in any spin-off at this point. Wiggler is a great choice though. Fly Guy is an...odd one, especially when combined with the fact Paratroopa is made a secret character now instead of default, so two of the four unlockable characters are just flying versions of regular ones. The funniest part about this to me is how despite Fly Guy and Paratroopa being intended partners, the regular Koopa and Shy Guy aren't. Shy Guy is partnered with Boo, while Koopa is partnered with...Yoshi? Because Birdo, Baby Mario and even Toad were all removed.
At least now when you play doubles in tournament mode you get to pick your own partner, instead of it being auto-assigned like the last game.
I've gone this far without even talking about the power shot mechanic. Great in concept, each character has an offensive power shot that is basically hard to return and may cause your own character to be stunned when hitting it, or a defensive power shot which can return the ball from anywhere on the field. Each character also gets a fun personality-filled animation for each type of shot (Waluigi literally creates a flowing river and swims to the ball for his defence shot for some reason). The quandary is obvious - do you use your offensive shot to try and get an easy point, or do you save it to save yourself from an otherwise lost point?
The issue with it is these power shots charge up so damn fast. I don't know the mechanics of it, but you and your opponent will both be charged after about 10 seconds after serving. It does briefly reset when a new serve begins, but unless you just used your power shot, you can expect it to be ready again in like 3 seconds. This means any kind of question around it becomes moot. Just spam it if you want, it'll be back again soon. Of course the AI loves to do just that - in fact they will even constantly use the defensive shot even in times when they could easily hit the ball without it (and in doubles matches, I've seen people use defensive shots when their partner is literally just about to hit the ball). Since defensive shots are purposefully easy to return, every time they do this you're almost guaranteed a point just by hitting it back, even without using your own power shot, which is always an option anyway because of charge time.
The whole thing should have been a great idea that made you think about how you use the mechanic. Instead it just drags to the game to a halt, constantly pausing it to show the 5 second animations. I pretty much entirely stopped using it except when necessary - which was rarely ever because as I said, the AI in tournament mode won't really pull any moves that get the ball into a spot you can't reach, until the finals of the last cup.
Oh and you can turn off power shots... but only in exhibition matches.
The last complaint I have is with that whole star rank thing I mentioned. You unlock it for a character by beating Star Cup...but ONLY in singles. You don't even get it for beating the Star Tournament (which is set up the exact same way, but has different names for the cups), despite this literally exists purely to fight star'd opponents. There's 6 total tournaments you can play - Regular, Gimmick and "Star", with singles and doubles for each. You can get star rank for your character with only a single one of these. Yeah, even beating Star Cup in doubles won't give it to you. The challenge tournament isn't even hard itself, so to ask players to have to play the even easier version 18 times if you wanted to do it for every character is crazy.
So yeah. The game plays absolutely incredible. It's so smooth, responsive and fun. The graphics hold up, the Mario Sunshine and Luigi's Mansion theming is strong. Mini-games are great. But the game is just so easy that it's actually boring to play, with the only way to get a challenge, or even play on a better variety of fields without needing their gimmicks, being to play exhibition matches. That might be OK for some people, but I always like to feel like I'm progressing to something in a game, which exhibition matches don't do. Probably fantastic with friends, but a shallow single player experience.
The game lacks any kind of story mode again, which is a bit of a bummer. More excusable on N64 imo, but by now I feel like we should be getting at least some sort of content beyond tournament mode. I may be able to live with tournament mode, if not for how god damn easy it is. I am not tooting my own horn - I will happily admit I lost a few games in the N64 version despite only playing to the regular tournament (not touching the 'special' cups) - in this game it's entirely possible to go through the Mushroom and Flower cup, aka 2/3rds of the tournament, without the opponent getting a single point. They're just that bad. It isn't until the final of the Star Cup that you face anything that could be considered above mentally impaired, and even they're unlikely to do more than get you to deuce on a good day.
Beat the tournament with a character and you once again unlock a harder tournament, this time it's the "Star Tournament". Named so because beating the Star Cup gives the character you won with a star rank, which can be toggled on or off. This supposedly improves the power of their shots. In the Star Tournament every enemy is in star rank, and supposedly the challenge in general is increased, though I couldn't really tell as it's still way too easy to get points in just a couple of hits after the ball has been served.
Beat the Star Tournament and you unlock Ace difficulty for exhibition mode. I tried this out and...yeah, this is an actual challenge from the game, at least for a bad player like me. So the whole purpose of tournament mode is basically to unlock a level of difficulty that can actually be fun, and only use it in the mode that exists for people to boot up when they're low on time or something.
There's also a Gimmick Cup this time around, named so because this game introduces new gimmick courses. The gimmicks on these fields range from mild nuisances like enemies on the field, to ones that change how you play because the shape and size of the field keeps changing. Or it could be the Piranha Plant goop one, which is utterly terrible.
These gimmick courses can be played without their gimmicks... but only in exhibition mode. In Tournament mode, non-gimmick cups will all be played in exclusively in the 3 Peach Dome fields, which are basically just normal-looking Tennis fields. You also need to unlock the gimmick fields for use in exhibition mode via winning the gimmick tournaments. I'm starting to feel like Nintendo really thought players would love to just spend hours upon hours playing matches on what is essentially the quick-play mode. Which I guess if you're playing with friends could be true. But for a single player experience that's generally used for practice and maybe warm-up exclusively.
The mini-games in this game are all top tier though. So many great ideas, and they're actually appropriately challenging too.
One aspect that did disappoint me was the character roster. Don't get me wrong, this is a perfectly fine roster, maybe even good by the standards of the time. But the first game has a roster that felt decently sized for an N64 game, and had so many wild card picks. This game removes some characters (Birdo, Baby Mario, Toad(?!) & Donkey Kong Jr.) and only adds 5, for a total of a net +1. The new choices aren't even that interesting, with Diddy Kong and Bowser Jr. just kinda been auto-includes in any spin-off at this point. Wiggler is a great choice though. Fly Guy is an...odd one, especially when combined with the fact Paratroopa is made a secret character now instead of default, so two of the four unlockable characters are just flying versions of regular ones. The funniest part about this to me is how despite Fly Guy and Paratroopa being intended partners, the regular Koopa and Shy Guy aren't. Shy Guy is partnered with Boo, while Koopa is partnered with...Yoshi? Because Birdo, Baby Mario and even Toad were all removed.
At least now when you play doubles in tournament mode you get to pick your own partner, instead of it being auto-assigned like the last game.
I've gone this far without even talking about the power shot mechanic. Great in concept, each character has an offensive power shot that is basically hard to return and may cause your own character to be stunned when hitting it, or a defensive power shot which can return the ball from anywhere on the field. Each character also gets a fun personality-filled animation for each type of shot (Waluigi literally creates a flowing river and swims to the ball for his defence shot for some reason). The quandary is obvious - do you use your offensive shot to try and get an easy point, or do you save it to save yourself from an otherwise lost point?
The issue with it is these power shots charge up so damn fast. I don't know the mechanics of it, but you and your opponent will both be charged after about 10 seconds after serving. It does briefly reset when a new serve begins, but unless you just used your power shot, you can expect it to be ready again in like 3 seconds. This means any kind of question around it becomes moot. Just spam it if you want, it'll be back again soon. Of course the AI loves to do just that - in fact they will even constantly use the defensive shot even in times when they could easily hit the ball without it (and in doubles matches, I've seen people use defensive shots when their partner is literally just about to hit the ball). Since defensive shots are purposefully easy to return, every time they do this you're almost guaranteed a point just by hitting it back, even without using your own power shot, which is always an option anyway because of charge time.
The whole thing should have been a great idea that made you think about how you use the mechanic. Instead it just drags to the game to a halt, constantly pausing it to show the 5 second animations. I pretty much entirely stopped using it except when necessary - which was rarely ever because as I said, the AI in tournament mode won't really pull any moves that get the ball into a spot you can't reach, until the finals of the last cup.
Oh and you can turn off power shots... but only in exhibition matches.
The last complaint I have is with that whole star rank thing I mentioned. You unlock it for a character by beating Star Cup...but ONLY in singles. You don't even get it for beating the Star Tournament (which is set up the exact same way, but has different names for the cups), despite this literally exists purely to fight star'd opponents. There's 6 total tournaments you can play - Regular, Gimmick and "Star", with singles and doubles for each. You can get star rank for your character with only a single one of these. Yeah, even beating Star Cup in doubles won't give it to you. The challenge tournament isn't even hard itself, so to ask players to have to play the even easier version 18 times if you wanted to do it for every character is crazy.
So yeah. The game plays absolutely incredible. It's so smooth, responsive and fun. The graphics hold up, the Mario Sunshine and Luigi's Mansion theming is strong. Mini-games are great. But the game is just so easy that it's actually boring to play, with the only way to get a challenge, or even play on a better variety of fields without needing their gimmicks, being to play exhibition matches. That might be OK for some people, but I always like to feel like I'm progressing to something in a game, which exhibition matches don't do. Probably fantastic with friends, but a shallow single player experience.