Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days has extreme old school dating sim vibes.
This is the latest video game adaptation of the trading card game Cardfight Vanguard, and thankfully for me (and unfortunately for the competitive scene) it’s a regular game with a single player focus as opposed to a F2P game. Fifty percent of the time the translation certainly feels like a throwaway F2P mobile game though.
The tutorial also can’t decide if it wants to show screenshots of the English version or the Japanese version.
I’ve only played a couple of matches but it seems to be exactly what you’d expect from a TCG adaptation like this. You hop around nodes on a map of your town and initiate visual novel-style story scenes and battles. You earn points that can be spent on buying cards and accessories (like card sleeves and playmats) and it seems pretty generous in regards to how easily you accrue points. It also provides a card crafting system to target specific cards you’re looking for. I like how there’s a “heart of the cards” mechanic in the story mode where you can equip a skill that, when activated, can influence your card draw during a match.
I wish pulling up card info didn’t block off so much of the screen because it’s difficult to read both card details while looking at the playfield at the same time, so I’m constantly cycling between the two as I learn the cards. It’s a minor thing that adds up to a big annoyance since I have to do it so much. I believe FuRyu has developed other TCG adaptations in the past so I imagine they’re just re-using what they already designed a long time ago, but it could use some improvement in the user experience.
Still though, it seems good enough and it’s way cheaper than playing the actual thing. It’s still $70 though! That’s a lot, and the season pass is also $70 (gets you booster sets into next year, so it’s nice there’s some longterm support). There’s also a ton of head start DLC that instantly gets you rare cards from each set (if you don’t want to get them through the game), and if you were to buy them all it would be like $50 or something.
One interesting thing about this game is that you play as a cool, smart, and popular high school girl with a cute little brother. This current generation of the card game had already seemed to be aiming at garnering a female (BL-fan) audience with what it’s done with its anime, but it’s cool to see the franchise double down with the game.
I think I’m going to be using the phrase “No lose intended!” a lot going forward.
Here’s to hoping that fan translation for the recent Battle Spirits TCG game re-emerges, as I can’t find the discord channel for it anymore.