Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days

Genre: Collectible Card Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Wireless / Online)

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Review:

The Cardfight!! Vanguard multimedia franchise has been running strong in Japan since 2011, featuring numerous anime and manga series, a live action adaptation, and of course the central Collectable Card Game. And while various parts of this franchise have been brought to the US, its numerous videogame adaptations largely remained in Japan until the release of Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days on PC Nintendo Switch in 2022.

Dear Days has a perfunctory story about a young woman named Yuki who discovers her wimpy kid brother Rasen has become a member of the titular card game’s local community, and finds herself drawn into it as well. However, this is all secondary to the card game itself, which draws most of the focus.

As Collectable Card Games go, I can’t say I was terribly impressed with the variety or strategy of Cardfight!! Vanguard as depicted in this game, though this may be because its in-game tutorial seemed very lacking, tossing a variety of terminology at the player and pushing them through a sample game without ensuring that said player actually understands what they’re doing. It doesn’t help that you can’t read most of a card’s text unless you press a button to zoom in, and when things happen in the game it’s not quite clear what part of the card is causing it to happen.

The basic gist of the gameplay, as I understand it, is that players have one central card with a hero unit representing them that gets upgraded multiple times over the course of the game, as well as up to two other attacking units flanking it, and up to three additional support units backing up the three in front. Players combine attackers and their paired support unit to strike at any of the enemy front line, and the enemy pairs frontline and support units to defend, optionally also discarding cards to add their power to the total. A successful attack with power greater than the defensive power will eliminate a flanking defender, while a successful attack against the central enemy will do damage to the opposing player, with each side responding to this by flipping over additional cards from their deck to cause other things to happen. A player loses when they accumulate six damage total. There are additional intricacies here, such as cards that “ride” other cards to add to their power, but I think that more or less covers the basics.

The thing is, even saying all of that, I’m fairly confident I have it largely right, but I’m not certain, and I feel like there’s more here I’m not understanding. And I definitely don’t feel like I’ve gotten a good grasp at the overall strategy of the game. As I’ve said, I don’t think this game’s tutorial has really helped me to adequately understand the game.

The presentation here is at least decent, with energetic synthesized music, nice anime-style character designs for character portraits along with simple Japanese-language voice acting for brief utterances from characters, and simple 3D for the gameplay depicting the cards and play area, as well as attack effects. It’s nothing extraordinary, but it gets the job done.

I don’t know, maybe I would appreciate Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days more if I already understood the Card Game’s core gameplay. But this is my first exposure to that Card Game, and I think the same will be true of most players. And simply put, I do not think this is a great introduction to the game. What’s more, from what I could tell, I didn’t find the game itself to be especially engaging or varied. Players looking for a combat-focused Collectable Card Game in videogame form may find something to like here, but I think most players craving solid Collectable Card Games have better options on Nintendo Switch, including a few free options that I found to be more engaging and easier to pick up. With Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days selling for a whopping $70, it’s hard to justify buying this when such alternatives exist.

tl;dr – Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days is a Collectable Card Game where players fight opponents primarily using one central character card surrounded by up to five supporting cards. While not terrible, I found this game difficult to engage with, in part due to an unhelpful tutorial. Fans of this franchise may enjoy this, but I think most players are better off getting another Collectable Card Game.

Grade: C

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