| Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau follows Mizuki Shiraishi as she tries to uncover a plot by the government aiming to use evil spirits. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Review Overview
What is Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau?
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau takes place in a Japan where supernatural beings are a known occurrence, and the government has a dedicated branch that carries out exorcisms. You will be playing as Mizuki Shiraishi, an exorcist from Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau, tasked with the investigation of the sudden blackout in Saiga Village situated in Nara. You head there and are faced with a literal ghost town, where all its inhabitants are missing, and is instead teeming with unlawful spirits!
Take down the spirits, and uncover the mysteries over Saiga Village’s disconnection from society and its missing villagers!
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau features:
⚫︎ Third person shooter gameplay
⚫︎ Horror-themed setting
⚫︎ Kevlar-wearing, gun-toting shrine maidens
⚫︎ Ghosts with guns
⚫︎ Extensive storyline
⚫︎ Multiple weapon types and models
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
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| Price | $9.99 | ||||
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Unfiltered Humor Excessive, Tastefully Hilarious Violence Surprisingly Well-Written Characters |
Frames Tank Hard and Often Gunplay Isn’t Very Good |
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Overall Score - 72/100
Despite all its flaws, Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau is a game you should at least keep on your radar. It’s the kind of experience you can dive into without overthinking, delivering shocks by flipping familiar tropes in a creepy horror setting. Once the optimization issues are ironed out, I’m sure it’ll be one of the best ways to spend your $10, offering a fun, unpolished charm that stands out in its own ridiculous way.
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Story - 8/10
Even though Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau leans heavily on vulgarity and familiar tropes, it hides a surprisingly rich cast of characters who get some solid development throughout the game. The story isn’t just your typical “ruin some ghosts’ day” kind of plot either. There’s plenty of intrigue, betrayal, uneasy alliances, and even shattered dreams woven into the mix!
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Gameplay - 7/10
Let’s get this out of the way first: Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau’s main gameplay element, its gunplay, isn’t very good. It’s steeped with clunkiness that will plague almost every aspect of your experience. Heck, I can’t even begin to describe them here without going on a tangent. But despite that disheartening opening, there’s a reason for its high score.
It’s just dumb fun. Sometimes, all you need to unwind is to shoot spirits armed with guns, grenades, explosive jackets, and baseball bats, you know?
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Visuals - 7/10
In a word and at a glance, Kinki Spiritual Affair’s visuals can be described as “average.” And that it is—it’s what you would expect from a horror game with this kind of price tag. But, there’s a reason why these types of horror games have become very popular. That’s because you don’t need cutting-edge graphics that barely differ from real life in order to provide. In fact, your imagination tends to be better at creating horrific worlds than most high-budget horror games can portray, so simply providing the setting is often enough to create an extremely spooky-looking place.
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Audio - 6/10
From forgettable background tracks, terrible directional audio, to reused sound effects, Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau’s poor audio design almost has it all. It doesn’t even have voice acting… which is a shame, considering its unfiltered and vulgar dialogue would have been an absolute joy to hear. Fortunately, the lack of good audio ironically lends itself well to providing an eerie feel to this “horror” game which, when paired with its dark and gritty visuals, actually results in a pretty spooky vibe.
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Value for Money - 8/10
If you factor in the game’s current issues with optimization, it might seem like I’m delusional for giving it a score of 8 when it’s barely in a playable state. It looks like the developer is actively trying to fix the game, though, so hopefully they’ll be able to iron it all out soon. Honestly, if it wasn’t such a laggy release, I would have easily given it a perfect score. $10.00 is dirt cheap for a game that can deliver such a wild ride.
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Review: Laggy, Hilarious, and Full of Heart
What do you get when you cross a horror game with as many crass, inappropriate tropes as possible? Whatever it is, Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau definitely lands somewhere along the way.
At first glance, this game isn’t one to take seriously. I mean, its main plot is about a girl in a sailor uniform gunning down evil spirits while everyone acts like '90s and early 2000s delinquents. Why would you pay $10 for that?
Well, here’s the thing: not all games need to deliver a deep message or break new ground in their genre. Sometimes, a game just needs to be mindless fun—and Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau delivers exactly that.
Once you actually play it, you’ll see that the craziness (and constant F-bombs) goes beyond over-the-top violence. There’s everything from kevlar-wearing shrine maidens to Japanese horror icons whining about the noise next door. Plus, a whole lot of middle fingers flying around.
You’re not supposed to take this game seriously—and that’s exactly why it’s great. It doesn’t just rely on jumpscares; it’s here to throw you off with all sorts of eyebrow-raising, ridiculous, uncomfortably familiar moments that will effectively mess with your “horror” experience.
Unfortunately, there’s one major downside—right now, the game is a technical mess.
The Optimization is Rough
The game’s biggest issue? Optimization, hands down. When I booted it up just an hour after release, it barely managed to hit 30 frames per second. At first, I thought it was a fluke and lowered the graphics from High to Medium, but it didn’t help. Even at the lowest settings, it still ran poorly.
Then I checked its RAM usage and was floored—it was eating up 3GB of my 16GB. I closed every app I wasn’t using and freed up about 4GB, but that didn’t fix it. The game expanded to use 5GB, but with 2GB of memory left, it still wouldn’t run above 40 FPS. As a comparison, even Wuthering Waves at its worst never used more than 4GB of RAM or dipped below 50 FPS on this same system.
It’s not just a RAM problem, either. The more characters or objects on-screen, the worse it gets—even during cutscenes (for some reason). Like, aren’t these supposed to be pre-rendered? This makes playing the game and following its story a real chore, which is a shame because…
Its Characters are Surprisingly Real and Well Written
For a game that’s composed of 10% curse words, the characters are surprisingly fleshed out. Almost all the named ones, even the major spirits, have some kind of backstory. Yes, even the generic side characters have their own little moments.
You’d expect the major characters to be well-developed, right? Main heroine Shiraishi and supporting character Saikawa both undergo real changes throughout the story—Shiraishi even has a humbling arc after getting betrayed.
But for even the minor characters to get their own moments is what’s impressive. Several of them are even able to talk about their dreams and aspirations to Shiraishi, despite the heavy death flags that surround them. It really gives a layer of emotional investment to an otherwise imperfect and impermanent game.
Once It’s Polished, It’s Perfect as It Is
Not every game needs to be perfect. Sometimes, it’s the quirks and flaws that give it charm. Aside from the abysmal optimization (seriously, devs, please fix it), Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau works because it’s unapologetically crass and violent.
With so much filtered content in games today, it’s refreshing to play something that throws caution to the wind. It’s why I can’t help but have a soft spot for it.
But, devs, seriously, optimize the game. This isn’t a request; it’s a cry for help. I’d love to enjoy the game more, but struggling to hit 20-30 FPS on an RTX 4050? Yeah, not fun.
Is Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Worth It?
Not at the Moment
At its current state, Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau is a buggy, unoptimized mess. Sure, you can grit your teeth and push through the issues for a bit, but when you’re swarmed by a horde of evil spirits all trying to smash your face in, you’ll definitely want those extra 2GBs of RAM and 30 frames to handle them with style.
That said, fear not: once the developer polishes things up, this game has the potential to be arguably the best $10 “horror” experience you can buy. And, fortunately, they are fixing it. At least, that’s what the recent minor optimization patch implies.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
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| Price | $9.99 | ||||
Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau FAQ
Does Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau have a co-op mode?
No, it doesn’t. Even if it did, I imagine it wouldn’t be a fun experience due to the lack of frames and constant stutters.
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Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Product Information
 | |
| Title | KINKI SPIRITUAL AFFAIRS BUREAU |
|---|---|
| Release Date | October 4, 2024 |
| Developer | Noto Muteki |
| Publisher | Noto Muteki |
| Supported Platforms | PC(Steam) |
| Genre | Shooter, Horror, Action |
| Number of Players | Single-Player(1) |
| Rating | Rating Pending(RP), Likely ESRB M 17+ |
| Official Website | Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Official Website |
