When it comes to Mario sports titles, I tend to lean more on the golf side of things. Don’t mind diving into some Mario Tennis every now and then though. However, the last Mario Tennis game on Wii U did leave a lot to be desired. Mario Tennis Aces for the Nintendo Switch is hoping to reinvigorate the Mario sports series by adding in new mechanics and bringing back the popular story mode to the game, and with a bigger focus on online multiplayer. For the most part, I’d say it’s worked out pretty well. Had fun with the tournament beta and that transitioned well into the full game. I do still have some issues, but there is certainly fun to be had.

THE GOOD: The core gameplay of tennis is still very much present. You have your usual topspin, slice, and flat shots, with lobs and drop shots as well. The ability to charge shots is also still here. It’s the newly added things though that bring the traditional tennis play to another level. There’s a trick shot ability that every character has, and this enables the character to make large jumps across the court to reach returns they would otherwise miss when running. Then there’s Zone Speed and Zone Shot. With Zone Speed, you will slow down time and allow your character to return a ball much easier. Zone Shots are only enabled by activating it when a star icon appears on the court. Once activated, your character will jump in the air and you can aim where you want your shot, which will travel at a very fast speed. Lastly, there’s the Special Shot, which works in a similar fashion to the Zone Shot, but is much more powerful.

The ways these new shots affect gameplay is that they bring harm to the opponent, specifically their racket. A normal charge shot, when hit at full, will knock back your enemy when it’s returned back. With a Zone Shot, your shot will travel at a fast speed. If your oppenent attempts to return the shot, they may take racket damage if it isn’t timed properly. If enough damage is taken to the racket, it will eventually break. At any time if a player loses all their rackets, they will lose the game right away, no matter what the current score is. When a Special Shot is activated, if a player attempts to return it and misses the timing, their racket will break completely. So this new mechanic of racket breaking adds in an extra layer of strategy, since you have to decide whether or not to return a hit at the risk of racket damage. Thankfully with the Zone Speed ability, it can greatly help in getting the timing down to block the shot without any damage taken. It can certainly create some interesting situations, and the ability to quickly end a game by breaking an opponent’s racket helps make you feel like there’s a small chance of victory, even if the score is very one-sided. It does sound a bit much to take in, but it’s easy to grasp once you get a couple games in. Mario Tennis Aces does a fairly good job in introducing its mechanics to players and the adventure mode provides even more help in fully understanding them.

The Adventure Mode acts as the story mode of the game and is a good spot to hone your skills and get used to how the game is played. In this mode, you’ll come across several unique situations, but they’re helpful in teaching you the usefulness of things like lob and drop shots, and how to properly return specific hits that come your way. It’s fairly straightforward and can be easy for the most part, but there will definitely be several challenges that will really test you. It’s a neat mode that lasts a good few hours depending on your skill level, and acts as a nice in depth tutorial before you dive into the online aspects of the game.

The online multiplayer is probably where Mario Tennis Aces shines the most. You have your usual lobby system where you can invite friends into for custom matches, or you can enter an online tournament in order to play against random players. The tournament mode puts you into a bracket where you will have to win several matches in a row in order to become the champion in the end. You’ll mostly be paired with players around your skill level, but there’s always a small chance you’ll meet someone who’s way higher skilled than you. Despite some of those heavy losses, the journey of reaching that championship is actually very fun. And once you encounter those matches with a similar skilled opponent, you’ll begin to easily see how the new abilities really add a lot of depth to the Mario Tennis formula. I’ve seen these types of close matches get compared to a fighting game, and it does feel that way. The constant back and forth and knowing when to unleash your special abilities are key in earning you victories in close situations. And if the new abilities aren’t to your liking or you’re just looking to change things up, there is a tournament option for just traditional tennis play without all the fast hits and slow time abilities.

Rounding out the rest of the game are the local multiplayer and Swing mode options. In Swing Mode, it’s the usual tennis but you’ll be making use of the gyro in the joy-cons for your racket controls. In local play it’s your traditional multiplayer, along with the ability to change up settings like how many sets you want to match to go for and what court you wish to play in. A standard overall set up of modes.

THE BAD: So while I think the online multiplayer of Mario Tennis Aces is great, it can certainly be frustrating and challenging. It does take a while to fully grasp the new mechanics and to then apply it properly. While you mostly will get paired with someone of a similar skill level, there will be moments where you will be facing someone who is clearly better at you in the game. These moments can be frustrating and make the game less enjoyable. Along with that is the moments of lag that can occur. There’s a 10-second window before a game begins where you can see how well the network connection looks, and if it’s low you can opt out before the match begins. While it’s better than the multiplayer test they held before release, lag spikes can still occur even when the connection looked good before the match started. So these minor things can build up and create a less than pleasing online experience. When it works though, the game is fun.

My next issue is with the Adventure Mode. While it is a neat story and a good way to learn and get familiar with the game’s mechanics, it doesn’t quite stack up to the great story mode that was present in the GBA games of Mario Tennis and Mario Golf. I’ll admit when I heard there was gonna be a store mode of sorts in the game, I was hoping something along the lines of the GBA titles with it’s full on RPG mechanics and free-roam exploration. Unfortunately that isn’t the case, but hopefully by including a story mode again, it shows that in future installments it may become a more flushed out mode that captures those GBA games.

Finally, while Adventure Mode can take up a few hours of game time, and you can spend many hours playing online tournaments, the amount of content you’ll gain with your play time is very minimal. Adventure Mode mainly unlocks new courts for you to play in multiplayer, but these courts aren’t available in tournament mode. Would have been great to see these hazard-filled courts be available in tournament play or online in some form, but tournaments only occur in the same basic court. While there is free DLC being released over time, it still feels a bit bare bones. Playing in the early multiplayer test gained you the Classic Mario outfit, but no other outfits are available for the other characters in this game. There’s lots of potential to be had with these future content releases, but it’s unfortunate that these aren’t present on release. So while the multiplayer is fun, there’s really no big incentive for winning other than upping your score on a leaderboard.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Mario Tennis Aces is a fun tennis game and a good change of direction from what the Wii U release was. The new abilities help add a new layer of strategy and depth to the traditional formula and things can get really tense during evenly-skilled matches. For new players, the Adventure Mode is a great way to get familiar with the mechanics of the game before jumping online. Unfortunately, the overall content available in the game can feel pretty bare bones. There’s a good amount of characters and the online is fun, but the lack of customization options and varied modes for playing random online matches, do hold the game back a bit. This is even especially true if you have no interest in the online at all, since there isn’t much else left after completing the short Adventure Mode other than facing CPU opponents. It’s a step in the right direction for the Mario sports titles though and it makes me very excited for the hopefully eventual Switch release of Mario Golf. So if you’re in need of another solid Switch online experience, Mario Tennis Aces is a good game to pick up.