It's a good game, the story is nice and what i'd call "cute", about people living their lives and playing this hobby for fun and glory, and learning how to deal with losing when the stakes are high. It's not tackling anything new, but i really like how it's presented. As for the game itself, it's Vanguard. No variations from the actual TCG besides being horrendously outdated regarding set relases. I would appreciate it more if it wasn't for the fact that it's SO EXPENSIVE. This cannot be ignored, the price it's asking for is simply far too much for what this is and what it offers regarding content. As if the asking price wasn't enough, the amount of DLCs it has is ridiculous and demands for even more money, more than what the base game asks for. Unacceptable.
This may also be a nitpick, but Cardfight Vanguard is all about imagining the fight itself, with you, the player, front and center as the Vanguard leading your army to victory on the skirmishes in planet Cray. If any card game deserves 3D models and animations for it's units battling, it's this one, but it limits itself to merely moving cards around. Konami had like 6 games with almost every single monster fully modeled and given appropiate animations, even the useless ones no one would play. They have no excuse.

While I'm very happy to finally have a solid Vanguard game in english, it's disappointing that the 70 dollar price point killed any chance of an active playerbase and possibly future vanguard games in the west. I understand that Vanguard isn't really popular enough to survive on the free to play model like Yugioh but it'll be compared to Master Duel regardless which makes people a lot less likely to buy it. As for the game itself, it plays very well with snappy animations and the right amount of visual flare. The story is nice and simple and I like a lot of the decks on offer, but most of my attachment is to the original Vanguard series and the decks from that era so I was admittedly pretty disappointed about this game being based on overdress.