dark horse as best tennis sim around. dont be deceived by the ps2-graphics and animations, i beg you!

I started the game in training mode, learned the mechanics (do not let go of the buttons before the satisfying smack of the ball!!!), slowly chipped away on the helping indicators of the gameplay and began to win matches.

i then modded the fake names easily into the original ones and started tour-mode with JM Del Potro. played a qualifying tournament against 800-900 ranked opponents. i thought, well, thats some PES-atmosphere on the court, barely applauding from the audience. i went on to qualify for the big tournament and made my way to the quarter finals against the no. 298 of the world.

the match was harder then the previous ones, at this point only played with the help indicator where the ball will land. the audience and its applause grew louder, the atmosphere rose. there were rallys with 20+ hits and everytime you hit a big winner, the crowd errupted. goosebomps! long time that i gripped my supported ps4 controller so hard in a tennis game.

and we are only on version 0,45 - cant wait for all the updates!

This is a great simulation tennis game. Whether you are coming from previous Tennis Elbow titles or older classics like Top Spin 4, this game will give you the experience and control you are looking for.

If you are off-put by the simple graphics, you would greatly benefit from looking past that in this case.

The mechanics of this game are unmatched by any other tennis game I have played. I have hundreds of hours in the Top Spin series, and thousands in Tennis Elbow 2013 (not on my steam account), and have enjoyed the realistic aspects of these games greatly. But TE4 takes the realism to another level. Shots are more uncertain, the physics engine far more realistic, which culminates to higher risks and higher rewards for well-executed positioning and shot selection (e.g. fast shots vs. slow and down the line vs. diagonal). The gameplay just feels great, as if you have so many options for each shots.

There is a solid learning curve to this game. With thousands of hours in the previous Tennis Elbow title, I could still improve my playstyle. And given TE4's more complex physics, there is certainly a high skill cap. So you should be comfortable with investing a good few hours to learn the base mechanics. Luckily, there are plenty of in-game tools to help you do so. The AI has a fantastic amount of levels and sub-levels, and you can play warm-up (just hitting about from the baseline) or just single matches until you get a grasp of the gameplay. There are also explanations of the different shot types, and you can choose to have movement-help and visual aids for aiming if you are a new player.

There are some bugs in the game, though most of them are minor. The World Tour does have all the players you could ever want, but they are not licensed (which would be nearly impossible to do, of course) and not all players are that realistically rated in terms of attributes. It can also be a bit frustrating to improve your player at times in career. Player attributes decline over time and you have to re-train them with earned experience, which sometimes mean your player will worsen a tad much over a short period of time, e.g. if you lose a tournament early. This a purely a balance issue, and can easily be adjusted if it's not just me.

Overall, this is an already great game for a good price considering the amount of hours you will get out of it, and the developer is very active. Reported bugs are fixed in the next release, and I am confident the game will only improve over time, just like Tennis Elbow 2013 did - also because of great mod support. I am very much looking forward to great mods which will further improve realism (and make players more like their real-life counterparts) in TE4 as well.

TLDR
Best tennis game currently on the market. It feels like you're actually playing tennis.
Though I strongly recommend mods, which are easy to install right within the game.

Preface and comparison to AO2
Coming from Virtua Tennis 3 and Top Spin 3/4 on the PS3, I was looking for a newer, more modern tennis game to play. Research online repeatedly brought up Tennis Elbow 4 and AO2 as the best tennis games currently on the market (especially if you want an extensive singleplayer career mode). Because I'm a sucker for realism in terms of graphics and animations as well as licensing, I opted for AO2 on a good deal.

Don't make the same mistake as me. Even though TE4 doesn't have "next-gen" graphics and somewhat clunky animations, it's head and shoulders above AO2 in every other department. Better and actually realistic tennis gameplay, better and more in-depth career mode, better multiplayer and mods take care of the non-existent licensing. All in all, TE4 is by far the most enjoyable and realistic tennis game currently on the market.

First 2-3 hours
First, install the XKT patch through the mod-menu within the game. It will extend TE4's career mode by adding all, real ATP and WTA 250s, 500s, Masters, Tour Finals, Grand Slams and other tournaments including custom 2D and 3D courts. It also comes with custom sounds, player textures, adds a bunch of realistic animations and clothing and it changes TE4's fake player names to the real ones. Of course the career mode also features all the Future and Challenger tournaments you first play through.

After that I strongly recommend going to the training club and play through the tutorials. Altough the mechanics work more or less like any other tennis game, there's still a few new mechanics that need to be learned and get used to. Personally, it took me a solid 2-3 hours to get into the game and fully understand how everything works. At that point, I created my player and started my first career mode and I've been having a blast ever since.

The Bad
Honestly, the overall experience of this game is so good, I'm gonna have to nitpick on a high level if I want to list a few shortcomings.

• Commentary is really bad. Very few lines, very often said at the wrong time. For example, talking about break-points when there isn't one or mentioning that I'm a top 20 player when I'm world rank 100+. It doesn't take away from the gameplay at all though. Also, the menu mentions that commentary is in the beta phase, so it might improve in the future.
  
• Animations are clunky. Mods add realistic forehand, backhand, serve and return animations, but the running animations stay clunky. Again, it doesn't take away from the gameplay at all. Even as a sucker for realism, it doesn't bother me at all. Like I said, nitpicking on a high level.

The one and only thing that really affects my experience for the worse (just a little) is the skill system. More specifically, the skill balance between the AI players.
Skills work 1-99 for the different aspects of playing tennis. Forehand power, precision, consistency. Same for backhand and serve. Stamina, speed etc. You get the idea. All in all a pretty good and balanced system. I really enjoy leveling my player in all the different categories and seeing the improvement it makes on court.

However, I find that the skill balance between existing players is very off. It doesn't scale correctly according to the world rankings. I don't know if it stems from the base game or if the XKT patch has anything to do with it.

Basically, I'm currently world rank 15 and I tried to adjust the difficulty so I'd have a hard time against the likes of Djokovic, Alcaraz, Medvedev and other top 10 players and a relatively easy game against lower ranked players. But then along comes some 29 year old world rank 150 nobody has ever heard of, that somehow has better skills than all of them, and completely smashes me off the court. As a result, I also find that the top ranked players get knocked out of tournaments relatively early, very often. Because well, they play against some random top 200 guy with better skills than them. That does take away some of the realism sometimes.

Conclusion
Like I said, best tennis game currently on the market.
9/10 rating. Could only be improved with realistic animations. But gameplay wise, it doesn't get more real than this.

Best tennis game ever. If you've been waiting for Top Spin 5, wait no more. Sure it would have better animations, but these get boring pretty quickly. What matters is the gameplay and the depth of tennis experience and TE4 has plenty of these. It's amazing how much work went into this game and it shows. When you turn off all assists and just feel every shot you make and see whether the opponent hit the ball well, it gives so much satisfaction. Just download a mod with true names and you're good to go. Amazing career mode. I've replicated Sampras' last years with the BIG 3 coming into the tour and even faced Federer in Wimbledon. Great feeling. The only thing I would add is hawk eye system. Just remove those ball shadows, make refs sometimes make mistakes and let us challenge the calls. Other than that great game. Thank you!

There are many tennis games out there with huge teams behind, lots of graphical quality, lots of money put on making them, on having famous faces on the covers, claiming to be the most realistic and fun... and NONE, ABSOLUTELY NONE come anywhere close to what Tennis Elbow offers.

The realism makes it different. Players aren't perfect, mistakes are as much part of the game as winners, and that's what tennis is about. Add to that realistic World Tour and you get an incredible experience.

I play one match a day and so every match matters, every match is important. Some are actually memorable and you remember everything from them! The fact that you can end up exhausted after a 5-set marathon is a statement of this. In fact, every point ends up being important because momentum changes during matches, you play better or worse, your opponents too depending on what goes on during the match. It can be frustrating at times, but you also end up fist-pumping and saying Vamos! after a key point. It's just like playing a real match.

Because in the end, TE is a game made by tennis lovers for tennis lovers.

Its the best tennis game out there. So much improvements from last game Tennis elbow 2013. Controls are realistic, graphics are not like AAA titles but that dosent matter to me while I play sports games. I have been following this game's development for over two years now, I know they have come a long way to produce a brilliant game like this. Bought it as soon as it came to steam. I trust this developer and the community more than any game. If you are a tennis fan like me, then you have to play this game. Absolutely gem of a sports game, probably the best sports game out there in the market gameplay wise. Looking forward to pour in 1000s of hours into this game. Thank you manutoo for making this game so passionately, Cheers to you.

UPDATE:

Gameplay:

Its a great improvement over its predecessor. Now you have to be in more precised position to play the shot perfectly, also you no longer cant play power/ top spin shots repeatedly accurately (10-15 shots) because of variation of ball bounce happens on the court. You need to be more focused on the ball this time, which is imo manutoo had made this almost perfect already. Although slice shots need more work I guess and is way too op this time, which is not realistic, but thats the only complaint I have for this game.

Animation:

They are about to add sliding and stretching animations, so excited about that. Besides that good improvemnts from last game here also. Cant expect more here anyway.

They are about to add commentary also. So it will be nice touch. Hope it will be not much monotonous. @manutoo Please keep up this great work and really hoping you consider adding Hawk Eye, because it will really build some good exciting moments.

I really like this game and highly recommend it to all tennis fans and gamers.

The greatest tennis game ever made just got even better.

I've only played 2 hours on steam but have hundreds of hours in the early access version of the game and have logged over a thousand hours in the previous game, Tennis Elbow 2013.

I've played Virtua Tennis, Top Spin, Grand Slam Tennis, Tennis World Tour, AO Tennis and Full Ace Tennis Simulator.

None of those games are anywhere close to the level of the Tennis Elbow series.

For anyone concerned about early access stability, in the hundreds of hours I've played, I've had two crashes and they were when the game was first playable.

Tennis Elbow 4 has taken tennis simulation to another level entirely, this really is the closest thing so far to actually playing tennis. The graphics and animation improvements add to the realism but the way the tennis actually plays isn't describable, you need to try it for yourself. Buy it and don't look back.

The developer, Mana Games, is one man and he continues to defy the odds and make the best tennis simulation available. He is to tennis video games what Novak Djokovic is to real tennis, The Greatest Of All Time.

I wasn't sure what to expect out of a tennis game built for the PC platform, because past PC tennis games left a lot to be desired. Well, after almost 8 hours into it, I've got to say this is one of the BEST tennis games I've ever played for ANY platform, and that includes my favorite Topspin franchise! The best way I can describe is that TE4 FEELS like tennis! It does a great job of capturing the ebb and flow of a real tennis match. There are ups and downs, punches and counter punches, as you wait for an opening, then go for the shot to put your opponent on defensive or go for the clean winner! There's also a great sense of risk and reward. Do you play it safe and wait for a better shot, or go for it all now?

I'm currently playing on my Steam Deck, and screen is definitely too small, as I have a hard time tracking the ball at times, but the controls are spot on. I'm still learning how to volley, but there's nothing quite hitting perfect approach shot, then putting the volley away for a winner! The computer AI always seems to come up with cheesy aces when they need them most, but otherwise it all seems pretty balanced. Besides, you can tweak the A.I as need for more or less of a challenge.

The updates keep coming, and I can't to see what the final product will look like, as it's currently still in early access. Bravo to the developer for making such an accurate representation of one of my favorite sports! Get it. You won't be disappointed.

I hate how much this feels like real tennis