SPY×ANYA: Operation Memories (Nintendo Switch) – The review

Started in 2019 in Japan and experiencing a meteoric rise in notoriety on the archipelago and around the world, the manga Spy × Family has become a license in its own right. A license which has been adapted through various other formats such as an animated TV series over several seasons, an animated film, a novel and even a video game. Speaking of video games, SPY×ANYA: Operation Memories has already been available for a few months in Japan on Nintendo Switch and is finally arriving here.

Agent Anya on a souvenir mission!

First of all, since we are playing the Japanese version, you will agree that it is difficult to place the absence of other languages ​​in the negative points. It is also difficult to tell you the languages ​​that will be present during its official release in our country, but let's skip this parenthesis to go into more detail on the Spy × Family license as well as this video game. The license is classified as “Shonen” in a very comedy, humor and slice of life genre. We are on a story of cold war between the fictional nations of Ostania (Eastern country) and Westalis (Western country). In this context of fragile peace, agent Twilight, a brilliant spy from Westalis is sent to Ostania to get closer to the dangerous extremist Donovan Desmond.

His target being difficult to approach, he poses as a psychiatrist named Loid Forger. He also goes to an orphanage to find a child to adopt and enroll in the Eden School, an establishment attended by his target's son, Damian Desmond. It’s little Anya who gets this role. Passionate about mysteries, secrets and spy series, our 5-6 year old little girl becomes affectionate with Loid by reading his thoughts thanks to her power of telepathy. Despite everything, having a daughter is not enough to be accepted at Eden, the school requires an interview with both parents to complete registration. Anya manages to convince a town hall official to play this role, Yor Briard.

Behind this role of civil servant, this attractive young woman is in fact a professional hitwoman. Beyond the taunts about his single status, Yor is looking for a man to complete his cover. This is how the Forger family is formed, a family totally improvised based on everyone's interests. It is in this climate of secrecy that our three protagonists continue their life together. Only young Anya is more or less aware of the deception thanks to her power of telepathy and her childish understanding but takes pleasure in this daily life. It is into this daily life that the game takes us as Anya vacillates between school life and family outings. In all this, let's also not forget the dog Bond Forger who can look into the future. The game also presents other secondary characters from the series like Yuri, Yor's brother or Anya's classmates like Damian Desmond or Becky Blackbell among many others also present here.

In terms of story development, we are not on a pure and simple adaptation of the scenario of the manga or the series but on a small, very secondary and ancillary story taking place during the events of the work. While the daily life of the Forger family continues quietly, Anya wants to put together a kind of memory notebook that is also part of a school assignment. For our little heroine, this will allow her to get closer to other students and potentially contribute to world peace. The game ends in a few hours, or potentially a little over ten hours for those aiming for 100%.

Don't expect any major revelations related to the canon of the work, the game only offers additional content to all that. It's difficult to have an ending for an adaptation of a license still in progress but since we are on the annex, we must affix an end of experience in one way or another. In SPY×ANYA, this pseudo-end of the game is obtained by managing to obtain all the specific photos of the family outings thus allowing Anya to constitute her schoolwork. A percentage of progress is associated with these family outings. This is why 100% can take much more time since it goes well beyond this objective.

We thus follow Anya's daily school life as well as the scheduled family outings, a progression evolving over a 3-day cycle including the family outing at the end. The progression of each day is quite similar with a part where Anya goes to school, interacts with her friends and makes memories at school. Then another part where, back at home, she can interact with her parents, some secondary characters without forgetting Bond. Once we have interacted and recorded our new memories, the family eats dinner and we regain control of Anya after dinner. At this time, we can choose to play a mini-game that helps Anya gain inspiration and helps her write her daily reports of her days.

Anya and her repeating memories

Each phase at school and at home – in which we can move Anya and interact with others – also offers us several spots where Anya engages in an activity. We can thus watch Anya and her loved ones at work and take a photo with a rating depending on several criteria: focus, angle and timing. The first point concerns the focus of the camera so as not to have a blurry photo rendering. The second concerns moving around the activity to capture the best photo angle. Then the third concerns taking a photo during an action or a very particular moment of these activities. There may be several special moments during an activity. It's about being attentive from start to finish and taking the best photos.

Each photo is rated out of 3 stars, 1 star per criterion. There is nothing difficult in obtaining them since each activity can be replayed 3 times, then they rotate regularly during the 3-day cycles of the game. In addition, assistance in obtaining each criterion is present in full activity. We thus have the “camera” mode view but we have the appearance of a colored outline associated with each criterion to indicate the criteria that we meet before taking the photo. The green outline indicates that we have the right focus, the yellow outline confirms the right angle and the purple outline indicates the timing. Thus, it is a question of taking a photo when the 3 colors appear on our screen.

The final score allows us to collect some small bonuses on the points we get for each photo. The points can be exchanged for items to take on our family outings to take specific photos that advance the game's main line. Then above all, they can be exchanged for clothes or accessories to dress Anya, Yor, Loid and Bond. In addition to the photos, we had mentioned it but we also have the possibility of playing mini-games in the evening or in free mode. There are a little more than fifteen mini-games mainly involving Anya and a few others where we can play other characters with some slight changes in characteristics or type of mini-game.

Each mini-game is divided into several difficulty levels to unlock. Then we unlock mini-games as our progress percentage increases. Mini-games ranging from a simple game of president cards with Anya, to an infiltration mini-game in a museum with Loid, or even a kind of mini Beat'em all with Yor. There are explanations of the game's controls the first time we play it and the license being general public, the experiences are as easy as any other type of Party-game. Whether it's the interaction phases, the photos or the mini-games, there is a mission system with normal or golden coupons to win. Missions that look like “trophies” with objectives such as “obtain X score in Y mini-game”.

Coupons can be used on in-game lotteries to try to get clothes and accessories for our characters or points. We also have an affinity level on some secondary characters of the game with whom we interact. Each interaction unlocks new dialogues increasing the affinity level on several levels. Each level reached unlocks side scenes with “Japanese animation” type illustrations to reward fans. The illustrations are all cute and successful and the overall realization in 3D cel-shading is clean. The character modeling is quite successful, the facial expressions are varied and funny. The game can be enjoyed properly on TV as well as on mobile.

That being said, those who swear by the technique will note the sudden drops in framerate on very strange and unreasonable phases and the fact that the environments are narrow and rather empty. SPY×ANYA remains pretty in its genre and more successful than some other shameful manga/anime adaptations with a much smaller budget. The soundtrack simply does its job by accompanying the game phases well without claiming to be memorable. Nevertheless, the Japanese dubbing work remains impeccable. Over a few short hours of discovery, the game is nice and can even be shared by two people on the “free” mode of the mini-games. This can thus increase the lifespan if we have a friend at our side since the budget certainly did not allow for an online mode. Then given the reduced catalog of mini-games, an online budget is not useful.

It may also be missing some animated cutscenes like we sometimes find in this type of adaptation, if only for the intro. Then we must admit that after this discovery, the experience goes in circles and this lack of staging makes things even more monotonous and boring if we do not know the license. Ultimately, a manga/anime lover can potentially appreciate the discovery and the game can be a gateway to the license through its endearing characters, its “feel-good”, light and funny side. As the game assumes that you already know the license, it doesn't explain much about the plot of the work. So, either the experience takes you and gives rise to this curiosity for the license, or it will be just average or even mediocre and then quickly forgettable except perhaps for the price of it upon release.