Spy x Family wouldn’t have been my first choice of anime for a video game adaptation. While it focuses on all three members of the Forger family, Anya feels like the star of the show, and trying to make a game in which the protagonist is a five-year-old girl doesn’t exactly give you much room to work with. A minigame collection spliced with an extremely light Persona-esque relationship system is about as much as you could realistically ask for, but Spy x Anya: Operation Memories doesn’t deliver on either front.
The game starts out like any good episode of Spy x Family, with Anya having to fill out a diary as part of her homework. Each day, you’ll talk to characters from the show and develop a bond with them, earning a cutscene and piece of artwork as a reward once you’ve reached a high enough bond level. The artwork is either recreations of the show or just straight screenshots, which is a little disappointing. The conversations you have with your friends and family members are equally shallow, as you often talk about the pictures Anya draws, how much she likes cartoons, how she'll work hard at school, and so on.
You’re also tasked with taking pictures of Anya doing various activities across a wide range of locations, whether it be on a family outing with Loid, Yor, and Bond to the beach or aquarium, or just around school or at home. Each picture is graded on whether the camera is in focus, you have the right angle, and what Anya is doing at the time. It’s essentially Pokemon Snap, but instead of annoying the local wildlife, you’re taking a picture of Anya annoying Loid.
If you feel like making your photos stand out more, you also have the option of dressing up each member of the Forger family in different outfits. Most of your actions in Spy x Anya reward you with points you can use to either unlock items to use for unique photo opportunities, or different clothes to wear during outings and around the house. Each item of clothing has a unique buff, such as increasing Anya’s movement speed or giving you discounts in the game’s store, but it’s an aspect of the game that feels crammed in with very little thought or reason for its existence.
There really is no need to increase Anya's running speed by five percent when all you're given are shoeboxes to run around in.
Every location you visit on a family outing has six photo opportunities, three of which you need to complete to unlock a wholesome family photo and complete the area. This then unlocks more locations for family outings, and taking family photos at all of them fills Anya’s diary with memories. Unfortunately, you can only take two photos during an outing, so you’ll find yourself revisiting locations at least twice before you can move on. Since you can only go on a family outing every few days, Spy x Anya moves at a glacial pace.
Thankfully, every time you return home, you’re given the option to play various minigames by spending the points you accrue after taking photos. While there isn’t a massive variety to choose from, they’re a lot more in-depth than you’d expect, ranging from parodies of other video games like Pac-Man, Fruit Ninja, and Crash Bandicoot, to more original games like dodgeball and raiding an art gallery. However, just like with taking photos, there’s a catch.
If you’re playing through the story, you’re only given a handful of minigames to start with. Every time you unlock a new destination for a family outing, you unlock a couple of new minigames, but since the game is so poorly paced, you’re stuck repeating the same games for a considerable amount of time. All the systems in Spy x Anya work together to create one of the most repetitive minigame collections I’ve ever played, and I struggled to play for longer than half an hour before boredom eventually struck.
That’s a shame because the minigames themselves capture the humor and personality of Spy x Family perfectly. Each one is completely different from the rest, usually focusing on a certain character, episode of the show, or in-joke, such as Yuri loving Yor’s infamously terrible cooking, or Anya’s training regime with Yor. There’s a separate game mode that lets you play any minigame you want at varying levels of difficulty, and it’s a lot of fun to flick back and forth between vastly different types to shake things up.
A highlight of the minigames is undoubtedly the one that has you frantically jotting down notes in one of Mr. Henderson's classes, which I did with a massive smile on my face the entire time due to the silliness of it all.
Unfortunately, these minigames are just not worth the effort of crawling through a dull and tedious story mode to unlock — you can only take so many pictures of Anya playing hide and seek before your mind goes completely numb. At that point, you have to ask if it’s worth handing over the price of a triple-A game for a Spy x Family flavored minigame collection.
You’ll probably get something out of Spy x Anya if you’re a massive fan of the show, but even if you're fairly enthusiastic about it like myself, you’ll find it lacking. It’s extremely faithful to the show in both humor and aesthetic, but it requires a prohibitively high tolerance for repetitiveness. There’s fun to be had, but it’s locked behind hours of taking photos, lackluster conversations, and repetitive busywork. It’s nowhere near the quality of a must-play title for a Spy x Family fan, and you can probably get as much satisfaction from rewatching the show.
Pros
- Faithful to the show with an understanding of its humor and personality.
- A variety of fun minigames with a surprising amount of depth
Cons
- Extremely dull and repetitive Story Mode
- Disappointing and shallow relationship system
A review code was provided by the publisher.
