Review: SPYXANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES is Cute But Drags

At the end of June, Bandai Namco released SPYxANYA: Operation Memories on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and PS5. You get to play as Anya Forger and enjoy the world of the hit manga and anime SPYxFAMILY. Bandai Namco was kind enough to provide me with a PC code for the purposes of this review.

If you would like to purchase the game for yourself, you can go to your retailer of choice including the Humble Store (affiliate link) and purchase it starting around $50.

In SPYxANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES, players will create and cherish joyful moments with Anya Forger, an orphan with telepathic abilities who was adopted by Loid Forger. Tasked with making a photo diary as an assignment for Eden College, players must take memorable pictures of Anya to complete her diary from the series through outings including parks, beaches, dog parks, aquariums, and museums.

SPYxANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES also includes a variety of more than 15 mini-games based on familiar scenes from the anime - ranging from peanut-themed bowling to rhythm training with Yor. Players can earn points from mini-games and unlock over 80 unique costumes and outing items, including clothing, accessories, and hairstyles for Anya, Loid, Yor, and Bond.

I want to preface this review with the fact that I’m a massive fan of SPYxFAMILY. Of course I was naturally excited for SPYxANYA. This game appeared to just be a cozy, casual video game that would present with some fun goofiness. There are definitely things that are good and even great just as there are things that I was not a fan of.

The first thing that always disappoints me on these anime games from Bandai Namco is that you only get the Japanese voices. If you watch these shows subbed, that’s not a problem. However, if you watch the dubbed, it can be disappointing. I really wish that they would include the dubbed voices.

Another aspect of the game that was frustrating was the odd choice of control scheme. When using a controller, the A button has become the standard button for confirming and B is the standard for canceling. For whatever reason, the team decided to swap that so that B confirms and A cancels. This is something that is weird and not too problematic, except it led to me struggling to start the game in the first place. When you first load the game, it just says to press any button. I pressed A and it prompted me to quit the game. I clicked B which ended up confirming the choice and quit the game. How was I to know!?

The last jarring part of SPYxANYA is that it literally jumps straight to gameplay with no lead up. I agree with the philosophy of getting the player to actually play the game as early as possible, but there was literally no lead up which just caught me off guard. I was expecting at least a 30-second cutscene to provide any kind of context, but apparently the GrooveBoxJapan team decided that would delay too much. This isn’t a strong negative, but I thought I would mention it.

My biggest complaint about SPYxANYA though is how much of a grind it is. There are a bunch of mini-games for you to play, but it takes a while to unlock new ones. You start the game with access to four of the games and after two hours I’ve unlocked one new game. You unlock new games by unlocking new locations for your outings (or ‘ootings’ for real fans) and it is a slow process. Honestly, this really demotivated me from playing this game a ton.

The last negative I will talk about is the first Loid mini-game that you have access to. In concept, it sounds like a fun little romp. You play as Loid on a stealth mission to steal paintings. Unfortunately, I felt like the Easy mode was too much already and it took me several tries to successfully complete it although I couldn’t do it stealthily. The main problem in my opinion was that the player is not given the locations of the paintings you are stealing. So you have to sneak around to locate them, sneak to them and steal them, and then try to sneak out within a time limit. If you get caught, you lose a bunch of time. I think that, at least on Easy, you should either have no time limit or you should be given the locations of the paintings to help you plan. It also seemed to have some audio bugs which I think also increased the difficulty.

Are there things I liked about SPYxANYA or was the game just an utter disappointment? I’m happy to report that there are quite a few fun aspects. First, you get a ton of outfits for dressing up the Forger family. You can have them match or give each one a unique outfit to let their personality shine and it’s just a fun little thing. I personally think it’s really cute to dress Anya up in the punk outfit and then give her the devil horns. It seems very fitting to me. Another positive is that it looks and runs really well overall. I played it mostly on the Steam Deck and it didn’t have any problems running at 60FPS with high settings. Third, the overall gameplay works well mixing Pokémon Snap-esque photography with mini-games.

There are two main phases of each day in the game. The first phase is the Day/Evening phase where you go somewhere (could be Eden, your home, an outing, etc.) and you either build relationships with other characters by chatting with them or you take pictures with key items. For the photography, you are tasked with getting the correct angle, focus, and timing to get the perfect photo. It’s very simple, but can take a bit to really get it down. Then, during the second phase (Night) you write in your diary about the day via playing mini-games. These include things like dodgeball with classmates, helping Yor cut vegetables for dinner, playing as Yor to assassinate traitors, etc. While I wish you could do more than about two things during the Day/Evening phases, it does work overall as a gameplay loop.

At the end of the day, SPYxANYA mostly accomplishes its goal. It is a cozy, casual game that lets you feel more like you see the day to day of the Forger family. The visuals are great, the concept is fantastic, I personally enjoy the photography gameplay, and some of the mini-games are a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it feels too slow in giving you a variety of mini-games to play which can be a huge factor in demotivating the player. This is ironic since the game clearly wants you to jump right in with no cutscene or anything to provide context at the very start of the game. In all honesty, the score is probably a 7.5/10, so I’ll round it up.