game would be a "breakthrough for the industry", and that it would elevate the genre to a new level. Post-release The game received a mostly positive reception in Japan. Japanese magazine Famitsu gave the game a score of 33/40, with four individual reviewers scoring it 8, 9, 8 and 8 out of 10. Since the game was exclusive to Amazon in Japan, sales weren't available for tracking, but the game received a mostly positive reception from users. In contrast to its original Japanese release, the international release of Devil's Third received negative reviews. It received an aggregated score of 43/100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on 54 reviews. Overall, praise was given to the game's design, gameplay and multiplayer elements, while most panned the game's campaign, controls, graphics, and inconsistent framerate. Nintendo Life gave Devil's Third 5/10 summarising that "Devil's Third is tricky to recommend, ultimately. There's undoubted fun to be had online, but at the same time this is an action game that sells Wii U gamers short. It's packed with good intentions and ambition, but Valhalla Game Studios was unable to execute its vision well enough. The devil is in the detail, and that's the problem". Sean Bell from GameSpot rated the game 3/10, praising multiplayer modes and occasional comedic moments, but heavily criticizing microtransactions in multiplayer, clunky controls and technical issues. Kirk McKeand of Digital Spy gave the game just 1/5 stating "Devil's Third is an offensively bad - sometimes actually offensive - action game, with sub-standard melee combat and fiddly gunplay. Riddled with technical issues, it's almost completely devoid of any redeeming qualities. It also has killer bats". IGN gave it a 3.5 out of 10, praising the game for mixing gunplay and melee combat, but criticized the game's poor presentation, simple and repetitive combat, random damage spikes, and pay to win multiplayer, calling it "an exercise in cynicism, a video game seemingly created for people who secretly hate them. There’s barely even a seed of a good idea here, let alone a fully formed one. There isn’t a single part of Devil’s Third that does not feel as though it were ripped straight from a decade-old playbook, and its nihilistic reliance on simplistic violence reinforces that fact with every severed limb." The game was placed on Polygon's "Worst Video Games of 2015" list. Similarly, it was also placed on GameSpot's "Worst Reviewed Games of 2015"