It’s a quasi-3D tennis game, and absolutely brilliant. The game has a fixed camera perspective unlike any other tennis game, where your player’s sprite is centered, and the rest of the court moves as you move. This forces you to judge the speed and distance of the ball more genuinely than any stationary camera game. Risks are amplified with this camera setup and the long animations force you to have patience, because there really aren’t second chances to catch up if you misjudge the ball.
It’s a hard game, but it still manages to be player-friendly. It might first seem way too difficult to judge where the ball comes and where the hitbox is, once you practice and focus, you’ll discover that the game is very fair and even generous. It’s also impossible to play this game conservatively. You have to go aggressive with volleys, smashes, and vary your shots. The name of the game is Aim for the Ace – so there is a big emphasis on serving aces and return aces. It’s easy to get good at serving but you can’t get overconfident with a good serve alone. You have to have a complete skillset.
It’s also a story-driven visual novel game, which makes it even better. Your coach and team motivate you in between sets and it has little scenes at high-stakes parts of the match, which really give this game personality. All of your opponents play differently. I absolutely love that there’s a 14 hour campaign where you play complete 7-game, 3-set matches against your opponents. A fantastic change of pace from most tennis games where it’s designed around 5-10 minute mini-matches between the most elite players at the grand slam tournaments. Instead you take the role of an anxious high schooler just trying to just be a team player and not let down their team, and every match takes its sweet time. You can even lose matches and the story goes on! We need more games about the glory of amateur sports.
It’s a hard game, but it still manages to be player-friendly. It might first seem way too difficult to judge where the ball comes and where the hitbox is, once you practice and focus, you’ll discover that the game is very fair and even generous. It’s also impossible to play this game conservatively. You have to go aggressive with volleys, smashes, and vary your shots. The name of the game is Aim for the Ace – so there is a big emphasis on serving aces and return aces. It’s easy to get good at serving but you can’t get overconfident with a good serve alone. You have to have a complete skillset.
It’s also a story-driven visual novel game, which makes it even better. Your coach and team motivate you in between sets and it has little scenes at high-stakes parts of the match, which really give this game personality. All of your opponents play differently. I absolutely love that there’s a 14 hour campaign where you play complete 7-game, 3-set matches against your opponents. A fantastic change of pace from most tennis games where it’s designed around 5-10 minute mini-matches between the most elite players at the grand slam tournaments. Instead you take the role of an anxious high schooler just trying to just be a team player and not let down their team, and every match takes its sweet time. You can even lose matches and the story goes on! We need more games about the glory of amateur sports.