SPYxANYA: Operation Memories review: Too cozy for school

SPYxFAMILY, the manga and anime series upon which SPYxANYA: Operation Memories is based, has an absurd premise. Loid Forger is a government spy who is tasked with infiltrating high society to get close to a political target. Yor Forger is an assassin who moonlights as an administrative assistant. Anya Forger is an orphan and mind-reading esper. Bond, the family dog, can see the future. Loid has adopted Anya and arranged a false marriage with Yor as part of his mission, and Anya is the only character involved who knows everyone’s secret identities. But she’s a child, and all she cares about is keeping this strange family together and happy.

This absurd premise is held together with a syrupy-sweet glue as the Forgers find themselves in increasingly wild situations that threaten to compromise their secrets. But in facing these complications they accidentally learn real lessons about parenting, compassion, and cooperation, bringing them just as close to each other as any “real” family. Anya often serves as the audience’s connection to that glue, since her mind-reading powers are key to both problem-solving agency and fear of what could happen if things go wrong. So it makes sense that a video game adaptation of this series would put the player in her shoes.

Spy games

SPYxANYA adapts the source material by focusing on a specific aspect of the story: “Ootings.” Oftentimes when a project comes up at Anya’s school the Forgers are woefully unprepared to tackle, Loid takes the group on a relevant trip. Here, the task is for Anya to maintain a diary, which gives plenty of room for back-to-back ootings. As Anya you pick the destination, which treats and toys to bring, and what everyone wears for the day. As you wander around the spot, such as a park or aquarium, you find points of interest and take photographs to fill in a scrapbook. At the end of the day, Anya has to write in her diary, which opens up additional minigames.

The minigames are often nods to other aspects of SPYxFAMILY, such as taking control of Loid or Yor as they take on responsibilities for their real jobs. You know, like Yor going out and slaughtering like two dozen people. The gameplay here is often shallow, but the series’ oddball sense of humor jumps out for at least the first time you tackle each one. Ultimately though, these minigames and other tasks are all about earning points to trade for goodies, which make filling out the scrapbook and earning more points from further ootings easier. This is not a game about following the source material’s story or getting into a lot of combat, or diving into dense RPG elements. Yeah, it’s one of those “cozy” games.

Doing stuff and things

I figured making a game that would fully encapsulate SPYxFAMILY would be difficult. It’s basically a slice of life series with bizarre twists, and as such it careens wildly between family-oriented sweetness, high octane action, political intrigue, and hard crashes into darkness. It’s a complicated story with a lot of moving parts and tonal shifts. So it makes sense for a game version to pick out a piece of the puzzle, focus on that, and make smaller nods to the rest. And with “cozy” games being such a big deal lately, making something that’s centered around the silly adventures of the Forgers without any major pressure to follow plot beats or tie a bunch of disparate scenarios together totally follows. There are a few issues though that prevent SPYxANYA from hitting all its marks.

For one, the packaging is weird. The game simply starts with Anya walking around her school for a controls tutorial, before transitioning to the main gameplay loop with a tiny introduction to the series’ background. It feels like you just get dumped in, and are doing things the game tells you to for the sake of it. There’s not a lot of onboarding, not even for the plot of SPYxFAMILY but for who these people are and why you should care about them. Because exposition is so light, the game almost feels like a sim-style format that has you rummaging through menus without much narrative context.

How cozy is too cozy?

The series’ personality doesn’t really come through menu UI, and since the characters aren’t really introduced or developed the whole process of engaging with SPYxANYA feels dry. That’s the case even for someone like me who is familiar with the series. It shouldn’t be a problem to have an adaptation of a series without simply regurgitating the plot, but without anything of substance at all, relying on outside knowledge is detrimental even for folks who have it. It doesn’t help that the VO performances, especially Anya’s, are weirdly wooden and low energy compared to the anime.

With all that, what you’re left with is a sort of checklist-style experience. You go to each ooting, fill stuff out, unlock new clothing items and collectibles, and do that over and over again. If you’re the kind of player who finds satisfaction in a low-pressure grind to simply gather a bunch of things until you’re done, that’s the kind of system you’re engaging with here. If you’re a SPYxFAMILY fan and think Anya is insufferably adorable, there’s a lot of fun in simply hanging out with her and snapping photos of her legendarily goofy facial expressions. But if you need a little more substance and goal-oriented action in your games, you won’t really find that here. I found my interest deflating quickly, especially after giving all the minigames their first tries. The game may as well have been over after that point, and any further cravings for this IP were better met firing up Crunchyroll or opening up a book.

SPYxANYA: Operation Memories is available now for PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4 and 5. A Nintendo Switch code was provided by the publisher for review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.