AO Tennis 2

AO Tennis 2 is a solid and comprehensive simulation. The lackluster role playing elements prevent a higher rating, though.

Overall, AO Tennis 2 plays and runs really well - this being one of the few tennis games on PC that does - it's just a bit of a shame that it falls flat in a few ways. The missing major players are a downfall: not having Serena Williams or Novak Djokovic is a bit odd in a game that's all about the Australian Open but tennis is probably a licensing nightmare. Play ending with one bounce is also quite a bummer, but I'm sure that's something that will be fixed if people have even noticed that. I also tired to play multiplayer at the time of review and the game would crash and close itself so it still needs to be patched a few times. The single player career experience is where it's at though. AO Tennis 2's solo campaign is a thoroughly enjoyable time and it's here where I would say that is scores an ace.

While the original AO Tennis may have launched with enough squandered potential to make even Nick Kyrgios shake his head, AO Tennis 2 has taken a major stride forward to more closely resemble an Ash Barty-style all-rounder. It could yet benefit from more balancing and bug fixing post-release, but as it stands AO Tennis 2 is the best videogame simulation of the sport in years.

While AO Tennis 2 improves upon many features from its predecessor, but the unbalanced challenge and short tutorials make the game quite inaccessible. The mechanic of good and evil seems like a unique idea, but its implementation is superficial at best.

Not everyone will find AO Tennis 2 fun since it asks the player to adapt to its peculiar gameplay, and even after a dozen hours of practice and playing, you’ll keep missing the court because of its whimsical guides. But if you look past those frustrations, you can have a good experience, especially playing with friends.

AO Tennis 2 is a blatant rehash of AO International Tennis, posing as a false new game. It improves bits of gameplay and career by a really small margin, but still prevails in its weird and unrealistic gameplay that is neither arcadey nor simulation-based. It never tries to rise above it and just presents basic and lazy short-term tennis experience.

Most of the time the gameplay is irritating, sometimes it just makes you mad. And it’s a shame because the developers do try to take the sport quite seriously with all the different authentic game mechanics. [03/2020, p.59]