Review: SPYXANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES is cute but boring

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

If you’d like to purchase the game yourself, you can head over to your favorite retailer, including the Humble Store (affiliate link), and pick it up starting at 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 creating a photo journal as an assignment for Eden College, players must take memorable photos of Anya to complete her series journal through field trips including parks, beaches, dog parks, aquariums, and museums.

SPYxANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES also includes a variety of over 15 minigames based on familiar scenes from the anime, ranging from peanut-themed bowling to rhythm training with Yor. Players can earn points from minigames 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 by saying that I am a huge fan of SPYx FAMILY. Of course I was naturally excited about SPYxANYA. This game seemed to be just a casual, comfortable video game that would feature a bit of goofiness. There are definitely things that are good and even great, as well as things that I wasn’t a fan of.

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

Another aspect of the game that was frustrating was the weird control scheme choice. When using a controller, the A button became the default confirm button and B was the default cancel button. For some reason, the team decided to swap it so that B was confirming and A was canceling. This is weird and not terribly problematic except that it caused me to struggle to get the game started in the first place. When you first load the game, it just says to press any button. I pressed A and it asked me to quit the game. I clicked B which ended up confirming my choice and quitting the game. How was I supposed to know!?

The final shocking part of SPYxANYA is that it literally jumps straight into the gameplay without any warning. I agree with the philosophy of getting the player into the game as soon as possible, but there was literally no warning whatsoever, which caught me off guard. I was expecting at least a 30 second cutscene to provide any sort of context, but apparently the GrooveBoxJapan team decided that it would take too long. It’s not a huge negative, but I thought I’d mention it.

My biggest complaint about SPYxANYA even though that’s how hard it is. There are tons of minigames you can 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 unlocked a new one. You unlock new games by unlocking new locations for your outings (or “ootings” for the real fans) and it’s a slow process. Honestly, this really turned me off from playing this game a lot.

The last negative I’ll mention is the first minigame in Loid that you get access to. In theory, it seems like a fun little sally. You play as Loid on a stealth mission to steal paintings. Unfortunately, I felt like Easy was already too hard and it took me several tries to successfully complete it, even though I didn’t manage to steal it. The main issue, in my opinion, is that the player isn’t given the locations of the paintings you’re stealing. So you have to sneak around to locate them, sneak up on them and steal them, and then try to sneak away within a time limit. If you get caught, you lose a lot of time. I think, at least on Easy, you shouldn’t have a 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 increased the difficulty.

There are things I liked about SPYxANYA or was the game just a total disappointment? I’m happy to report that there are quite a few fun aspects to it. First, you have a ton of outfits to dress up the Forger family. You can match them or give each one a unique outfit to bring out their personality 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 devil horns. It seems very fitting. Another positive is that overall it looks and plays really well. I played it mostly on the Steam Deck and it had no issues running at 60 FPS on high settings. Third, the overall gameplay works well mixing Pokémon Snap-style photography with minigames.

There are two main phases to each day in the game. The first phase is the Day/Evening phase where you go somewhere (could be Eden, your house, an outing, etc.) and build relationships with other characters by chatting with them or taking pictures with key objects. For photography, you are tasked with finding the right angle, focus, and timing to get the perfect photo. It is very simple, but can take a while to actually get right. Then, during the second phase (Night) you write down your day in your journal by playing minigames. These include things like dodgeball with classmates, helping Yor chop vegetables for dinner, playing as Yor to assassinate traitors, etc. While I wish there were more than two things you could do during the Day/Evening phases, overall it works as a gameplay loop.

At the end of the day, SPYxANYA achieves its goal for the most part. It’s a cozy, casual game that makes you feel more like you’re seeing the everyday life of the Forger family. The graphics are great, the concept is cool, I personally enjoy the photography gameplay, and some of the minigames are a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it seems a little slow to give you a variety of minigames to play, which can be a huge factor in turning off the player. This is ironic since the game clearly wants you to jump right in without any cutscenes or anything to provide context at the start of the game. In all honesty, the score is probably a 7.5/10, so I’ll round it off.