I had been enjoying my time with the game on adventure mode. To be honest it was too easy. Shit got stepped up finally in the 3rd? section with the ghost mansion, but was not overwhelming. Got to 4th act level one I think playing a squid....I cant beat him....

Shits kinda pissing me off. His spin can be insane even on serves. He counters like 85% of the shots. Its also on a ship with the flag mast sitting in the center of the net which can be bounced off. If I hit it, he almost always rebounds with another bounce off the mast.

I could go one with the cheap shots, but am I just a scrub, and whining? Anyone else having a tough time? Trick shots are not the most responsive, or accurate, and seem to be at best a 50/50 shot in heading off the shot. Tips?

I had to take a break after the mansion. Nintendo's design decisions really need to get with the times. When you fail a mission, why can't you just have a "retry" option? Instead it loads you to the map and you have to load back in. Kind of ridiculous.

Options also seem very sparse. Is there no way to turn off replays? I didn't fully understand the timing of trick shots in the tutorial, so I'm not looking forward to what you're putting up with now.

Yea the retry is annoying. I dont know how that gets passed any dev these days. As I said it was too easy in the early game. Which made the higher play stuff not even necessary. Which didnt teach well. Dont get me wrong I like the game. I normally dont struggle with much, least less then most. But I am getting pretty shit on by this squid.

The adventure mode is definitely the one thing that aggravates me. Otherwise, I can say I'm enjoying it a lot.

@drflapjack: You can make a game as hard as you want as long as its difficulty has an inverse relation with the time it takes me to retry the level. I have stopped playing multiple times due to no quick resets. :(

I can see why Blooper is a pain in the ass, he caught me out with the rebound shots off the mast so many times. However, I stumbled across a reasonably "cheap" way to beat him thanks to playing some practice matches against the "Pro" AI (the 2nd highest difficulty) beforehand. I noticed they use Zone Shots a lot. And I mean, literally every time they have energy. Against Blooper though you're gunna wanna do the least obvious thing, and hit every single one of your zone shots directly at him. When I played he failed to block 100% of my zone shots, and his rackets only take 2 zone shots to break. So, 6 zone shots and 1 special later I had broken all 4 of his rackets and moved on!

As everyone else said though, the fact there is no quick retry in the menu (if you get off to a bad start and lose 2 lives on the rally challenge, for example) and that when you fail you can't even press + to skip the "you suck lol" cutscene is infuriating. That said, I've at least found it less frustrating than playing online against some absolute monsters.

That Mirror Queen boss is frickin horrible.

Yeah the enemy AI battles in adventure mode get crazy hard as many of those players get obsessed with zone shots and you rarely block them since they shoot it so far away. However, if you just focus on breaking their rackets to get a KO, all of that difficulty is null and you win an undeserving match of tennis. Felt it was kind of cheap at first, but always the CPU spamming zone shots so the KO’s feel good!

Yea I finally looked up strat for beating him. Sounds like he may actually not be beatable the normal way? Or you would have to be crazy good to do it. I did finally break his racket. Dont think they made it clear that you kinda needed to do that. I prob tried 25x to beat him normally.

It forces the match to be pretty different in that you are just going to have to let power shots, or shots that are out of reach go by so you dont waste any meter. Boom Boom really wasnt that bad. I broke his racket too, but I think I could have won normally as I was winning.

https://www.videogamer.com/guides/mario-tennis-aces-guide-how-to-beat-blooper-and-boom-boom

Ok so it's not just me. That ghost mansion boss is abysmal. I spent over an hour trying to beat it and still haven't. It feels like for the second and third phases, where you aim is irrelevant. Sometimes it'll hit and sometimes it won't. And they don't give you enough time to recharge your meter before trying again so you can never do a rebound attempt if you fail to hit it (which I think is the implied thing they want you to do). Also, it's 5 minutes long and you can't restart if you screw up early.

I'm very close to just quitting the adventure part and only playing it online.

@andiznit: I always used to say a game has to be at least as fun as it is hard. That’s what got me through Master Ninja difficulty Ninja Gaiden.

The time-to-retry aspect is huge, though. Hotline Miami is probably my most memorable example. It treated failure like learning. The music kept playing, everything kept going. No noticeable loads, no waits. I wouldn’t have finished the game with 30 second loads after death.

Hmm...not sure if I'm relieved or let down by this post. I am just getting to the Boo Mansion now. Thus far, the game has been an absolute cake walk, so on the one hand I'm happy to hear that its difficulty ramps up. Though if it's difficult due to unfairness/cheap tactics, then that's also a major bummer.

Ah well, I honestly just view the adventure mode as a throw-away time sink to unlock the courts and players. Online/Local Play is the reason I bought this game.

I was just searching forum posts last night looking for tips to beat that. A really weird difficulty spike out of nowhere for that particular mission. In the end my best advice is when he spins the ball away from you make sure you use your trick shot (flick the right stick in the direction of the ball) and most of the time you should be able to hit it back. Otherwise just build up your meter and try to break his rackets. It's not easy, but I finally won doing that after literally three straight hours of trying.

People talking about how hard the ghost mansion boss was. I...managed to beat her on my first try. Yes there's some annoying tech with her like how strange her furniture trick shot attacks are and all the shields she gets to block the target and dumb, but if your persistent and can aim at her mirror target you should be fine.

I don't know about you all, but the worst boss in this game was the fucking mast on that damn ship level. Also, fuck Boom Boom it took me a while to think about finishing him with a KO.

I somehow beat Kamek on the second try though.

Found a cheap way to beat Kamek too - use backwards trick shots and always return the ball to the same side of the net he's on. When you're waiting for him to return just run towards the net on the same side as him and wait. Not 100% foolproof but by using a trickshot the game automatically will account for rebounds off the mast if necessary. Took me about 5 attempts.

@fullthrottle49 said:

Lol Im glad it wasnt just me. I was like what the fuck is going on. This is a Mario game...Ive tried this guy 20 god damn times...Do I just suck? Im so confused....God the Mast bounces....The whole match seemed like a RNG rigged for you to fail. I dont think I ever took more then a round per set. Im still wondering if he can even be beat normally. The strat I linked kinda implied maybe he couldnt, or assumed he cant be anyway.

Thinking of buying it but ambiguous feedback makes me hesitate. Jesus y couldnt nintendo nail the content as much as the gameplay.

The Adventure Mode is such a disappointment to me. Mostly made up of gimmick matches that do a bad job of teaching you what they want you to do and often feel badly rigged against you (the ship mast being the biggest culprit.

Online play has been ok but I know as someone with limited play time within a week or two I’ll just get rolled in every match.