At the end of June, Bandai Namco released SPYxANYA: operating memory Available for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4 and PS5. You can play as Anya Forger and enjoy the world of popular comics and animations spy family. Bandai Namco was kind enough to provide me with the PC code for this review.
If you’d like to purchase the game yourself, you can do so at the retailer of your choice, including the Humble Store (affiliate link), with prices starting at approximately $50.
In SPYxANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES, players will create and cherish joyful moments with Anya Forger, a telepath adopted by Loid Forger. orphan. One of the missions in Eden Academy is to create a photo diary, in which players must take memorable photos of Anya to complete a series of diaries of her outings to the park, beach, dog park, aquarium, and museum.
SPYxANYA: OPERATION MEMORIES also includes over 15 mini-games based on familiar scenes from the anime – from Peanuts-themed bowling to rhythm training with Yor. Players can earn points through mini-games and unlock more than 80 unique outfits and outing items, including outfits, accessories and hairstyles for Anya, Loid, Yor and Bond.
I would like to preface this review by stating that I am spy family. Of course I’m excited Spix Anya. The game seems to be just a cozy, casual arcade with some fun silliness. There are definitely some things that are good or even great, just as there are some things that I don’t like.
The first thing that always disappoints me about these anime games from Bandai Namco is that you only get Japanese voices. If you watch these shows with subtitles, that’s not a problem. However, if you watch the dub, it can be disappointing. I really hope they include voice acting.
Another frustrating aspect of the game is the odd choice of control scheme. When using the controller, the A button has become the standard confirm button and the B button the standard cancel button. For whatever reason, the team decides to exchange the message so that B confirms and A cancels. It’s a weird thing, but there’s nothing wrong with it, but it made it hard for me to start the game in the first place. When you first load the game it just says press any button. I pressed A and it prompted me to exit the game. I clicked B, finally confirming my choice and exiting the game. how could I know!
The final shocking part Spix Anya is that it actually jumps straight to gameplay, with no guidance. I agree with the idea of letting players actually play the game early on, but the lack of actually any guidance caught me off guard. I was expecting at least a 30 second cutscene to provide any kind of background information, but apparently the GrooveBoxJapan team felt this would be too much of a delay. This isn’t a strong negative, but I thought I should mention it.
My biggest complaint is Spix Anya But it’s such hard work. There are a lot of mini-games for you to play, but it takes a while to unlock new ones. You start the game with access to four games, and two hours later I unlocked a new game. You unlock new games by unlocking new outings (or “outings” for true fans), which is a slow process. Honestly, it really took away my motivation from playing the game.
The last negative I want to talk about is the first Loid mini-game you have access to. Conceptually, this sounds like a fun little farce. You play as Loid on a secret mission to steal paintings. Unfortunately, I felt like the easy mode was already too much and it took me several attempts to successfully complete it, although I couldn’t do it secretly. I think the main problem is that the player doesn’t get the location of the painting you’re stealing. So you have to sneak up on them, sneak up on them and steal them, and then try to sneak out within the time limit. If you get caught, you lose a lot of time. I think, at least on Easy, you either don’t have a time limit, or you should be given a location for the painting to help you plan. It also seems to have some audio bugs, which I think also adds to the difficulty.
Is there anything I like? Spix Anya Or is this game a complete disappointment? I’m happy to report that there are many interesting aspects. First, you get a ton of costumes to dress up the Fogg family. You can have them match or give each one a unique outfit to let their personality shine through, it’s just a fun little thing. I personally think it would be really cute to dress Anya up in a punk outfit and then give her devil horns. This seems to suit me just fine. Another plus is that it overall looks and runs very well. I mainly played it on the Steam Deck and ran it at 60FPS on high settings without any issues. Third, the overall gameplay perfectly combines Pokémon snapshot-style photography with mini-games.
The game has two main stages every day. The first phase is the day/night phase where you go somewhere (maybe Eden, your home, an outing, etc.) and you can build relationships with other characters by chatting with them, or take photos with key items. With photography, your job is to get the right angle, focus, and timing to get the perfect photo. It’s very simple, but may take some time to really understand. Then, in the second phase (evening), you write about the day in your journal by playing a mini-game. These include playing dodgeball with classmates, helping Yor cut vegetables for dinner, and assassinating traitors as Yor.
Ultimately, Spix Anya Basically achieves its goal. It’s a comfortable, casual game that makes you feel more like you’re seeing the Forger family in their daily lives. The visuals are great, the concept is great, I personally love photography games, and some of the mini-games are fun. Unfortunately, giving you the various mini-games feels too slow, which can be a big factor in demotivating players. This is ironic because the game clearly wants you to jump right in at the beginning of the game without a cutscene or anything to provide context. Honestly, the score was probably 7.5/10, so I rounded it up.
