After a thirteen year hiatus, the TopSpin series is back with TopSpin 2K25, and with the weighty moment-to-moment gameplay still at its core, it’s a tennis game revival that doesn’t disappoint.
TopSpin’s gameplay has always stood out among the bevy of tennis games available, with its weighty movement and ball smacking mechanics that just get better the more you practise – something I absolutely needed after not playing a tennis game since the early 2010s. To help players get back into the swing of things, TopSpin 2K25 comes with an excellent Academy mode.
Tennis Legend, John McEnroe guides you through the basics, starting you off slow and eventually building you up to the heavier stuff. Academy mode recognises that the games mechanics aren’t going to be easy to get to grips with and shows a lot of patience in the structure with McEnroe coaching you – famously not a patient player, but a much calmer influence here. Mistakes will be made, I was told a lot, but learning takes time.
Even when I hit the courts to face other players, it took me a while to become good at the game, showing that perseverance pays off. At a certain point, it just clicked and all of a sudden I was smashing perfect balls past my opponent who only just made my last ball.
Serving comes in three flavours, with your basic tap to serve being the go to for beginners, before moving onto the meatier power serve. This is done by holding down one of the four shot buttons which then displays two subtle meters for power and timing. That’s generally fine, but what really requires mastery is using the left stick to aim, which I struggled to do as the UI was split between two parts of the screen, making keeping an eye on both difficult. You can’t just hold ‘up right’ and hope for the best, as it will just send the ball at max power outside the court. It becomes instinctive with enough play, but it took me a fair chunk of time before this happened. It might be quicker for others, but I still think the power bar could be a little closer to the aiming target.
The third type of serve, the advanced serve, does not care about this. This uses the right stick exclusively, flicking it down to throw the ball up, then flicking up and in a direction to perform your desired serve type. This is probably the better option for accuracy, but I prefer being able to see and control the power of the shot, and I wasn’t sure how much control I had over the power with the advanced serve.
By default the timing and power meters stay visible through a rally and are a great help to let you see where you can improve your timing – you can turn them off if you want, though. Mistiming hits really matter. There’s a stark difference with catching an opponent’s return shot on point and just missing it, potentially giving them enough time to get back in position to smash you again. I found this happening to me quite a lot in the beginning, but as I got my timing down, the playing field evened out and it became a battle of wits.
While you can play as a selection of 24 real world tennis stars, mixing current players and legends from the sport, I made most of these discoveries with MyPLAYER, a custom character which you can take though their own career or online. Of course, I wanted to dominate the tennis world, so I created Bastian Richter, the hotshot German tennis ace who was ready to take the world by storm. I set his nickname to ‘The Brigand of the Baseline’ and set off up the ladder.
MyCAREER is a lot of fun and has a shed load of stuff to do – there’s no narrative going on here, but I was happy to craft my own story in my head. Each month gives you a chance for a training session, special event and then a tournament, earning rewards and XP to level up my character. There’s also specific requirements to achieve which raise your infamy rank, unlocking new mechanics to add to the gameplay.
For instance, after a time, you’ll be able to buy homes. While you can’t actually visit them, each home provides a reduction in player energy use when playing in that country. You can make one of your many homes permanent residence and each home has a different benefit. For instance, my home in Germany lets me recover an additional 20% player energy at the end of tournaments on grass.
Maintaining player energy is important because if it gets too low you could start to get injured and be forced to miss some major tournaments. There’s an option to rest, letting you skip as many months as you like, recovering a certain amount of player energy per month skipped. Eventually, you get access to hire staff as well, who also provide various benefits like reducing the likelihood of you receiving injuries, earning extra player energy or receiving more VC (virtual currency) from tournaments.
It quickly became a mission for me to improve and before I knew it, I was four years deep, had five houses, a full staff on hand and multiple championship trophies in the my trophy rooms. I had a personal coach who I hired, who gave me personal objectives which once completed, added to my character’s attributes, making him even more of a monster on the court. I was even able to unlock a special skill which made charging up my power shots a lot quicker. There were many coaches available, with different special skills available, but as I was building Bastian to be a powerhouse, this particular coach made the most sense.
Outside of the main career, there’s the standard exhibitions mode where you can play as a whole host of tennis legends, and then there’s local multiplayer exhibitions for up to four players, which is nice. Of course, you can also head online and either play with real world pros in 2K Tour mode, or using MyPLAYER characters in the World Tour. Both feature full crossplay, though matches just with friends are only coming in an update later this year.
It will be fun to see what other players have created in the World Tour – sadly we weren’t able to test online before launch – but thankfully Hanger13 hasn’t gone as far as some other 2K sports games with VC, which should protect online play’s integrity. While the Deluxe Edition gets a bundle of VC from the off, the currency can be earned very easily just through playing, and the XP boosts that you can buy with it are very cheap. The effect of VC and potential microtransactions should be relatively minimal, with more of a focus on the seasonal Premium Centre Court Pass.
While I’m not that keen on battle passes in games these days, and the fear of missing out they tend to rely on, TopSpin 2K25 has permanent seasons that you can tackle at your own pace, instead of having a deadline. The first season is mostly cosmetics and animations as well with a few XP boosters, so it’s not a great loss if you don’t get it. I guess it’s there for people that want more options, but it feels strange to me.
Graphically, TopSpin 2K25 looks pretty good and performs smoothly on PS5. My one gripe is the facial animations are a little shoddy, but I’ll be honest, I’m never in a cutscene long enough to care, because I’m usually spamming the button to get back to the action where I’m staring at the back of my players head.