Surprisingly frustrating.
The world tour is actually very well set up. You start out by creating your character, then attending a tennis academy or doing mini games to raise your player's stats. The different activities at the academy effect what stats are raised, as well as the different mini games. The mini games are suprisingly enjoyable, and there are plenty of them to do. You can dodge fruit to increase your running speed and ability to turn, you can play bowling to raise your serve stats, you can play shuffleboard to raise your ground strokes, etc etc. The training academy is a different story however. Some of the exercises are incredibly easy, while others seem impossible - and a waste of time. Since your schedule is set up by a yearly calendar you don't want to waste too much time failing mini games. The first low ranked tournaments you actually play in are way too easy, in fact I never lost a point. The matches do get a little more intense once you finally make it to the Slam events, but they are pretty much still an easy win and don't feel really satisfying. If you manage to make it to the King of Players match, the difficulty seems to basically shoot through the roof and it's ridiculously hard to win. Overall though the world tour part of the game in enjoyable and should provide you with enough to be satisfied. There are plenty of unlockables, winning tournaments unlock new clothes and rackets, and this should provide most players with enough to feel satisfied.
The actual gameplay is where I have a problem with the game. The players just feel too small on the court. What I mean by that is that the players seem like they can't ever cover enough ground in time to get to a ball. This basically make court positioning useless in this game, which is supposed to be a big key for a real Tennis match. So, since you can't run fast enough to get to most balls the game really just turns into a guessing game. You constantly have to guess where the opponent is going to hit the ball and set up there in time to have any real chance of winning a point. Also, you have the ability to dive for balls that are just barely out of reach. This sounds like a good idea, but it really isn't. It always leaves you helpless after you make a diving shot, so you basically lose the point because the opponent can easily come back with an overhead to put you away. The diving seems to happen randomly sometimes as well, you'll think you're in good position to return a shot, then your player will dive for no reason. Professional Tennis players rarely dive for anything anyways, so seeing it in a game doesn't justify it in any way I think. Another thing I didn't like was the fact that no shots have a chance of going out of bounds. The only time shots go out of bounds is if you are trying to return an overhead smash, or a max power serve, but other than that there is no chance that a shot will go out of bounds. I think this is a bad thing personally, the game doesn't really have an risk/reward type system in it because of this. Also, it means there is limited control to how deep, shallow, or close to the lines you want to try and hit a shot, so it takes a lot of the strategy away from the game play.
You can choose between 3 types of shots, lobs, slices, and topspin. Top spin is your fast ball, slice is your change up, and lob is your ephus. The slice and lob shots are both pretty useless it seems like. The slice supposedly makes you get a better angle on your shot, but I've never noticed a difference in angle between that and the topspin. Also, the lob shot hardly ever goes over your opponents head when they are at the net, so it's pretty useless as well. The Top Spin shot is basically all you need, but it doesn't really have any top spin at all, it looks like a flat shot. It'd really be nice if the top spin was actually noticeable - since it is in a real game of tennis. Also the volleying in this game really isn't necessary, and it's difficult to do in a singles match. One thing I REALLY liked though was the ability to rush the net. I played Top Spin a lot, and it seemed impossible to get to the net for some reason, even if you just held the joystick straight up - that wasn't the case in Virtua Tennis. But, once you get to the net in Virtua Tennis, it gets back to that guessing game again. Since it's so easy to hit passing shots if you guess wrong you'll either miss the ball or make a dive causing you to lose the point.
One thing I really enjoyed about this game though was the doubles matches. Playing with a friend on the same team is really fun, and it works great the way Virtua Tennis' game system is set up. It's a little hard to score, but it's enjoyable nonetheless, the points can get pretty hectic and intense.
Overall, I decided to give this game a 7.5, despite the many shortcomings in the gameplay, I think the game was saved by a well developed career system, as well as a good doubles system. It could have been worse though, but hopefully in the future better games will be made.