Tennis Manager 2021 Reviews

At first I thought the price tag was expensive, but I'm enjoying it. Still working through all the tactics and how to get the most out of matches. Wishlist I'd like to see more "promising" players allowance in the avant garde academy selection. A roadmap is essential Workshop Get rid of Training main tactic, second etc. Just list all the tactics. Loving it so far.

Let me start by saying the Tennis Manager 2021 is a work in progress. The ratings I'm giving it is for the potential it has (below you can also find the current grades). If you love sportmanagement games and tennis in particular, look no further. This tennismanager is the first game in tennismanagement that surpasses the level of becoming uninteresting and repetitive after a couple of hours. It has training options that are elaborate and fantastic. It has youth rankings and tournaments and a nice looking visual display. + Great development of your players, starter to superstar + Nice visual display of the matches +Attention to the motivatinal part (though I say the wrong things all the time :-) +Stats, stats & more stats. - The game is far from finished, lots of bugs in conversation. -Sponsorships arent working at the moment -How can they be unhappy with me but still give me 500k and let me continue next season, thats just crazy. - You can get great players before becoming a great manager, this must improve imo All in all I think it has a a 9.5 /10 in potential if they manage to change the current bugs & even out the challenge. In it's current state it's only a 6.5 out of 10 because they really need to fix the aspects named above. Byt yeah, this is the tennismanagementgame I've been hoping for for years!

Definitely recommend based on potential; however it's not even close to complete. The main reason to buy the game now would be to help development. This is easily the most complex Tennis Management game on the market even if a lot of the algorithms seem a bit iffy. Because this is a new IP it will take them some time to find their groove and that's completely fine by me. Football Manager did not start out great either. Overall it's a fantastic purchase if your intention is to support development. I am super excited at seeing future updates and what they'll bring, and hope that they focus on polishing a lot of the current features before dumping more in.

Alright, let's write this feedback in English (and not in Russian or French) in order to be visible to a higher number of people who consider to buy Tennis Manager 2021. I have bought this game "thanks to" an important ankle injury, which threw me out of tennis for at least 9 months. I am a tennishead. I play it myself, I watch it and now I also play it on virtual courts. Before, i was more a football fan. I mean THE football which is played with... feet, not this American Rugby thing which i quite like by the way. 10 years ago I used to play Football Manager a lot and i must say that Tennis Manager is quite similar to it, although there is a lot of things to improve. This game is about numbers and text. At the same time, match representation is quite ok, considering that the game is the pioneer of tennis managers and, most likely, will have a monopoly in this niche. It is IMPORTANT to install the TM Realist mode available in Steam. Big thanks to its creator(s)! Without it, there are no photos of the most important players and you will have to play the game with Roger Feberer, Novak Djorovic and Rafael Nabal… Install this mod before you start your career. You play a role of a tennis academy’s manager/coach. You have to improve the academy infrastructure, deal the contracts with players, coaches and scouts, manage sponsorships, plan training sessions and tournaments, and what I like the most, coach a player during his/her matches. The managing part of the game is quite poor. There is not much things that you can do and it is a pity. For example, the choice of sponsorship deals for clothes and equipment is rudimentary – just choose the one of two(!!!) options which brings you more money. The required objectives are quite similar. This choice appears a message to which you are obliged to reply. Why not make it accessible at any time? Searching for sponsors could be a great addition to the playing experience. Communication with players and staff is also scanty. There is no proaction. Only reaction. In fact, communication with staff is simply absent, while verbal contacts with players outside matches is limited to “I am tired of training, could I please have some rest?” I believe that there are many opportunities for improvement. Just look at how it is done in Football Manager. That said, managing aspect is not a disaster. I understand that it is the first game of a kind and, if sales go well, it can become a series with every episode bringing more and more interesting features. Regarding training and match management – here I should say: bravo! Training options are realistic and complete. Tactics as well. Match management is simply great. I can only issue a warning: in the current state you must be a tennishead, probably play tennis yourself and know, for example, the difference between flat, slice and kick serves. Training and matches are the things that sustain my willingness to play this game, killing time before the return to tennis courts :) In the end a few suggestions and remarks addressed to developpers. Hopefully they read the comments. • Transfer to a player or a tournament must be available from ANY window by a simple click on the corresponding name. Right now it is not possible and quite annoying, since you make more clicks than needed to go where you want to go • There should be a possibility to withdraw from a tournament. Just like in the real world. • There is an important bug in the Planning tab. Suppose, the last week shown is S7, you click to go forward, a new window with weeks appears but the first in a row is not S8 as it should be but S14 !! • When you check the planning for one of your players at a certain week and shift to another player, it would be great that the game shows the same week as you checked with the previous player • Madrid, Colombia… Really? • Why Emma Raducanu is so underestimated? Haven’t you seen her incredible talent? :) To conclude. If you love tennis – buy it. You will not regret it, I promise. If you, let’s say, a fan of sport managers but tennis is not exactly your thing – I am not sure it is for you. The game is quite raw in its current state. Those who are simply curious – just pass your way.

So far playing 5 hours, game is interesting. The training coaching is really intensive. Problem I have is that the game seems to hang and crash alot. Always happens when I hit the continue button. Yes to the organizers, I have re-installed the game, re-installed PC and even started new games. Seems to have issues if I start a new academy or play with an existing one. One of the new academy starts froze on 52nd week. Latest new academy start made it to new year and week 15 before crashing and freezing. Sometimes I restart it and it proceeds. Sometimes it freezes on the same day and week. I have not had any issues with simming portion of the game. Its a good idea on paper and interface is alright. Reminiscent of FM games. I think once the crashes, hanging and bugs are ironed out. This will become a great game. It definitely can give Tennis Elbow, AO and others a run for its money. EDIT: Playing it further, some reason there was another hang/crash that occurred in the game. How did I get around it? I refused to do interview and basically had to ignore making any changes or doing any offers until the week finished. Also another issue with this game: "XXXXXXX has gone to the nightclub, XXXXX was seen drunk and hungover." This instance is happening to 16 year olds in the game at a high rate, seriously? The incident news needs to be re-balanced. It seems to happen anytime my young player is winning during tournament. Post Update Review #1: Old game has crashed and hanging on Quarterfinals of Grand Slam event. Tried 5 times and game will not go any further. At least I made it past year 1, I guess. Post Update Review #2: God help me...played more of it. Surprisingly, lasted 3 years before froze in December. Still plenty of bugs in this game. Biggest problem is under 18 or teenage players being denied Rookie10 events and claiming they have mandatory tournament to play in. Which there are zero tournaments they are playing in via JTL. I had a kid from 15 to 18 stuck playing in JTL and for some reason they were declined playing in WTL or MTL tourneys. Multiple people had problems with this and yet, developers have yet to fix this. They constantly tell people to send them their saves and update the game, yet they dont fix this problem at all.

Not recommended currently. FM like presentation, great potential, easy to mod for real names and pics, enjoyable overall so far, but... Big game and save breaking bugs where game won't proceed when press continue. Game is pricey as comparable to FM cost, needs to be either EA and apx £20 or £30 and be more reliable and actually consistently work

I've played pretty much all of the significant sports management type games out there and a lot that aren't significant. I'm a fan of the genre. This is one of those which looks like it would be good with all the information presented to you, but there is too much micromanagement and it takes too many clicks to do the things that you want to do. Some of the mechanics could be simplified a bit. Right now it's either, let the AI handle everything, or, on the morning of November 18th do I want my insignificant junior player to be working on forehand accuracy or hard court familiarity? Do I want her serve on gameplan number 2 to be more or less aggressive? There's no middle ground. It's one of those games which diffuses your interest with all the clicking you have to do to accomplish one task, and all the information it throws at you. People think this is the nature of these types of games, to overload the player as much as possible. But if you don't simplify things and have a streamlined interface it becomes a game where you sit for 2 hours and play, and at the end of the session you've advanced 3 in-game days. I can see some people liking this, if they're extremely into tennis and they're alright with it taking 100 hours to complete 1 in-game year even if they're hands-off. But I know from experience that all of the grind would cause me to run out of enthusiasm without accomplishing much, and after around 10 hours I'd never pick this up again. If you're not sure, pick it up and be honest with how you feel after 2 hours. Are you enjoying yourself or not?

Looking for Football Manager but on other sports? Then you are at the right place. Here's a list of yay's and nay's, and some ideas to improve it. Yay : - It's a niche market : Sport Simulations, and considering I know of only 1 other license about Tennis management and it's coded by one guy alone, you might prefer the more polished aspect of Tennis Manager 2021. - Interface : If you often play Sport Simulations like Football Manager or Pro Cycling Manager, you won't get lost here. It's definitely been made by people that play these games and it shows. - The Pro Circuit : It feels realistic enough, as in you can easily recognize who's who, and find these players mostly where they're supposed to be, whether it be rankings or tournaments. I wasn't disturbed too much by the change of names and such. - The Added Elements : When you are finished working with your players, there is still some work awaiting you like handling Infrastructure construction, interviews, equipment sponsoring, ... which varies the gameplay a bit Nay : - Price : Considering the state of the game as it stands (early access), I would not recommend spending 34.99€ on this game. I've got thousands of hours of play on FM, but after about 12 real hours of play on this one, I feel like I extracted most of the fun I could get from it. I'm not planning coming back on it a lot before it's been updated. - Interface : Sure, the interface has some polish to it, but it's still missing important Quality of Life improvements : Clunky Filters, You can only really access a player that's not in your team through Scouting or Rankings page as when clicking it brings you to your own Squad, No routine appliable to your trainings so you've got to change it yourself every 2/3 weeks, ... - Improving your players : As I said above, training your player to greatness feels really painful as it takes a lot of time in 2 ways : You inputting every few weeks the trainings yourself to optimize which stats you want to improve and augment the intensity of the training as Medium is VERY slow, which could be improved by creating tools for players to create routines that focus on some key aspects of a player's game. But it's also taking a lot of time because stats generally improve relatively slowly, even with what the game shows you as the most talented players, partly due to the impossibility of gaining stats whilst playing tournaments, which doesn't feel realistic. Playing only seem to improve a few mental stats which only can be improved that way, but that's all. This feels a poor decision and incite not playing much tournaments until your player is "finished". - Games : The "sliders" aspect of the game feels unrewarding as it's really difficult to notice any difference without the stats to show it. Having more or less intensity doesn't seem to change that much visually. Tactic plans cannot be selected as you wish as you can only select one and the player's stats decide the 2nd and 3rd one. Also, the flow of the game doesn't really respect traditional Tennis : in most of my games, I end up gaining more of my opponent's services than my own, ending up in Break/Debreak/Break/Debreak/... patterns. - Tactics : Simply digging through it seemed very management heavy. It's really for people knowing Tennis or willing to die & retry through it a lot which is made very grindy. - Scouting : You basically receive no help. You look for potential players with very few informations and hope for the best. Remembering young players that performed good helps, as well as comparing Age to Reputation of a player, with the first being the lowest and the second the highest possible. - The Added Elements : Sure, you'll have the dessert on the side, but unfortunately it doesn't really taste that good. Improving infrastructures over the first few levels doesn't feel rewarding nor interesting, winning tournaments doesn't feel rewarding (no interview, no special animation, no..thing), ... The game still misses a lot of flavor content to help the player really feel invested into the game and his management adventure. It's the same for every other interaction which is either too few too little or plain inexistent. Even the mails you receive end up all being the same, and after a few hours you've been through almost every possibilities. I still had a good time with the game and hope to see more appear during the early access, else I'll be highly disappointed.

[h1] Randomness, hidden numbers, meaningless interactions with players and press, Cumbersome planning/calendar and gimmicky mail spam [/h1] I am writing this review as I am ending a 2nd year of coaching. Both years' results have been extremely successful (Junior: R1 both years / WTL: R200 1st year then R100 2nd year). Second junior player in the academy is progressing the same way, so no raging here, just simple facts. Also, important note to better understand the depth of the problems listed below: my coach “ability to motivate” (pre and post match talks) and “communicate” (interviews) are both 18/20. Which is good enough for the stat to show blue instead of the standard “good” (range 13-17/20) green. [b] Interactions with players [/b] So you can talk to the player before the match, during the match and after the match. This is the part my coach excels at. Bottom line is: it’s both random and useless. Here’s the details: Before the match: A message tells you the player is stressed/confident/pumped/fearful etc. and you get to pick a line between half a dozen choices to address the situation. Obviously the goal here is to try and make the player more confident, or play along if the player is already pumped. - Problem 1 Randomness: 80% of the time, the response will be: "X didn't seem to react." which is frustrating because it means 80% of the time you’re useless, despite an incredible 18/20 ability to motivate. In case I, the player, would turn out to be a dysfunctional human being unable to realize a stressed player needs to be reassured, I started picking random lines. It didn’t get any better or worse. -Problem 2 Uselessness: 20% of the time, the talk would connect, yielding however a 50/50 good/bad outcome. So on that 50/50 basis, I got to turn a "stressed" status to "fearful" (bad) and I got to get the “listened carefully” (good?) response which changed absolutely nothing. Conclusion: is it's just a Russian roulette game: best case scenario, nothing changed. It doesn't help that some choices like "Stop playing with your phone" or "You seem to be much more interested in that girl/boy than in the match to come" seem to refer to a backstory that just isn't there, has never been brought up once and so comes out of nowhere. Good news is, the random outcome of this interaction is meaningless, see why in the next paragraph. During the match: You can talk to the player while they play. There's 7 options like motivate/criticize/You can do it! etc. These options seem to be here to try and influence the current mental status of the player divided into 4 stats: Motivation/Determination/Confidence and Emotion. - Problem 1 hidden numbers: How those stats affect your player's game is unknown. You probably want everything up but you don't know what the benefits are. No numbers, percentage nor anything. Does a “confident” player attacks more often? Does a “presumptuous” player try more risky moves and you want to tone it down? What about “on a cloud 9” or “devastated”? No clue. - Problem 2 hidden numbers again: These interactions seem to be on a shared cool down that is not displayed, so you just have to regularly bring the interaction menu up and check if there's anything you can do to calm your player down or just watch helplessly as they spiral down and lose more and more easy points. You can't strategically plan and make use of these interactions. Click them when they're available and hope they'll be up again when you'll need them. In my experience, the option is available about twice or maybe thrice per set so knowing when you can use it should be a big deal. -Problem 3 randomness: The outcome of the interaction is random. Notice your player’s “motivation” is “concerned”? You’ll probably want to hit the “motivate” option yeah?. Seems reasonable. Well you’ll get a random good or bad outcome (double arrows down or up) on a random stat. Yup, “motivate” can bring “emotion” down and leave “motivation” untouched. Go figure. -Problem 4 uselessness: Most of the time though, those interactions will yield a “no reaction” response. Keep in mind my coach stat is 18/20. So my conclusion is: don’t use these options: the outcomes are random and you don’t know what the mental stats do in the first place so you’re better off just watching the game and hope for the best. After the match: Same as before the match. Congratulate, joke, criticize: it will most likely result in “didn’t react” but you’ll get the occasional “listened carefully”. As to what it does, you don’t know, no feedback. [b] Interaction with press and sponsors [/b] Sometimes you’ll get an interview with the press. This is another part my coach excels at (18/20 in this stat as well) - Problem 1 redundancy and irrelevance: You’ll get the same questions asked again and again no matter how relevant they are to the situations. “After a particularly grueling season’s start, how do you feel...” => I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve been rocking the charts since day 1. How about the fact that the tournament’s finals played between 2 of my players? Should make for a much more interesting subject. - Problem 2 Uselessness After 2 full years, I only got 1 mail back from a player pointing out they liked what I said to the press. It was very early in the first year and I suspect it was part of the tutorial or scripted. Since then, no feedback whatsoever positive or negative. As for sponsors, I never heard of them in those 2 years. Each player you recruit comes with a fixed sponsor and that’s it. No contract, no negotiation, nothing. [b] Calendar and planning [/b] -Problem 1 complete mess. So there’s a tab for the WTL/MTL tournaments, a tab for the JTL tournaments and a sub tab for your player’s planning in a totally different menu. If you’re coaching a Junior woman for example, you have to go back and forth between WTL, JTL and their actual planning. Of course, switching tabs messes up the particular week you’re viewing so check week 21 in JTL, go to WTL to compare the tournaments available and you’re presented with week 42 of WTL. So go back up week 21 in WTL, see there’s a much more interesting/relevant tournament there, book it and go back to the player’s planning (be presented with week 7 now) to check for another availability to squeeze a JTL tournament sometime later. Rinse and repeat for every players (man/women/juniors M&F) in your academy and breathe out because you’re not done yet: these are only pre-registrations, so you might get a mail later saying your registration has been declined. So now you have to go through it all again. Also, depending on your ranks, there are tournaments which are mandatory, and you won’t get noticed too much in advance. It might be an ATP thing more than a TM2021 thing, but the UI makes it a chore to navigate through. Oh, and you’ll get random wildcards for tournaments you haven’t booked. Be mindful before pressing “accept” and go through all the tabs again. - Problem 2 hidden numbers and inconsistencies There are 3 slots available for every day of the week. Plan and place various training sessions cards and rests cards in each slots according to your goals. You’ll get a “workload” rating for the week (too heavy workload brings a player’s physical condition down) Try and plan 6 heavy (red cards) training sessions: you get a medium workload rating. Try and plan 6 light (yellow cards) training sessions: you get a medium workload rating as well, go figure. -Problem 3 not in control during tournament. During a tournament, every single slot of every single day of the week is grayed out. Except the actual match of the day only takes one slot out of 3. The AI will assign training or rest sessions to those slots. You have no control on those. [b] Gimmicky mail spam [/b] (too many characters, review ends here)

the game could be really incredibly great, but the algorithm is broken. Those are a real stats that I took the time to take from the game: my player is classified as 60, and play against 30. repeated the game 100 times (save and load) and never managed to win, so far so good. now reversing situation by playing player class 110, again 100 games ... 30% win ... goes up to 60% if I pick the right strategy, and as low as 10% if I pick the "wrong one". the game feel more like gamble than management as form, moral, physical lvl do not seem to really matter sometimes otherwise the game is honestly great, but I want to play a manager game, not at a casino ... either fix the algorithm, or make it more clear on what is going on ...