Mafia: The Old Country

Mafia: Old Country delivers a richly cinematic narrative set in early 1900s Sicily, blending mafia intrigue with a tragic love story and stunning Unreal Engine 5 visuals. While its historical setting and film-like presentation are captivating, the gameplay remains linear and lacks depth, offering limited freedom and post-game content.

If you can forgive those insecurities, perhaps the result of trying to balance a mainstream genre game with more experimental narrative ambitions, The Old Country has an enormous amount of heart. [Issue#415, p.88]

Mafia: The Old Country isn’t just another game about the mafia—it’s a full-fledged journey into a cultural layer of history and cinema, filled with references to The Godfather and similar classics that seamlessly blend into the story and atmosphere. The game isn’t perfect, but it’s stylish, focused, and cinematic. If you’ve been missing that very kind of 12–14 hour “film-like” experience, enjoy such narratives, and don’t mind a few technical rough edges, this one is worth picking up—titles like this are a rarity nowadays.

Mafia The Old Country was meant to revive the franchise after the failure of Mafia 3. Its strengths lie in a gripping story, charismatic characters, and a beautifully realized Sicilian setting. The cinematic presentation and soundtrack add real flair. But the gameplay falls flat: gunfights lack punch, stealth feels dated, knife duels repeat themselves, and stiff animations break immersion. The game also over-assists the player, undermining its own realism. In the end, it’s a visually stunning but mechanically outdated entry, worth it for the story but disappointing for anyone seeking engaging gameplay.

Mafia: The Old Country isn’t a bad game, and it shines in its artistic and graphical aspects. At times, it reaches photorealism and captivates with its cinematic approach—its lighting, camera work, landscapes, music, and historical setting are all top-notch. However, on the narrative and gameplay front, it shows inconsistencies that prevent it from fully taking off. Even so, if you’re a fan of mafia stories, this is definitely something you’ll want to play.

A mafia adventure that is often rather mediocre in gameplay terms, but is still entertaining with charismatic characters and a competent, if hardly surprising, story.

Mafia: The Old Country isn't a AAA title, so it should be judged by slightly different standards - but still, more was expected from Hangar 13. Sure, the first and second Mafia games didn’t have outstanding gameplay either, but they made up for it with atmosphere, charismatic characters, sharp dialogue, and the chemistry between the protagonists - especially Vito and Joe. That’s what helped players overlook the gameplay flaws. The Old Country, unfortunately, lacks that spark. That said, it’s still worth playing - if only for the stunning vistas, impressive world design, and well-directed cutscenes.

Some small annoyances aside, Mafia: The Old Country is a great entry to the long-running series, and it’s done a fine job at adapting the formula to a brand new historical context. It does run the risk of alienating long-time fans, as the jump back in time makes it quite an adjustment. However, if you just let it tell the story it wants to, you’ll find it can match the quality you've come to expect from this series.

Mafia the Old Country is an enjoyable cinematic game with great characters and story, but gameplay feels to as old as the Old Country.

Mafia: The Old Country tells a superb story with a colorful cast of mafiosos. Even though the plot is classic, we can’t help but get drawn in, as the atmosphere is perfectly set and the Sicilian scenery is sublime. The immersion is such that we’re even willing to forgive gameplay which, without being fundamentally bad, remains stuck two decades in the past in its design and archaic AI. Even if we can still feel that the game is aimed at an already convinced audience of the franchise, it remains a very pleasant narrative experience.

Mafia: The Old Country is the textbook definition of fine, which is a shame because the first game was such a stark contrast to anything that had come out at the time and had so many unique ideas. For this sequel to come out and do little else than push the boundaries of visual hardware is genuinely disappointing. Like I said, the story is definitely worth experiencing, but the game isn’t going to be remembered.

Mafia: The Old Country is narrative-driven, short, and linear. That was exactly what I needed at the time, and it’s nice that the atmosphere, setting, and story are up to the standard you expect from a Mafia game. Unfortunately, the shooting mechanics are mediocre and become very repetitive in the end. Fighting, racing, and sneaking are rarely genuinely enjoyable either. At times, I really enjoyed this game, but I was just as often bored.

Mafia: The Old Country fails to engage in any way. Even if you love knives. This is a 10-15 hour linear action with a predictable storyline that is incredibly boring.

Mafia: The Old Country is an ambitious action-adventure game that portrays the Sicilian Mafia of the early 20th Century through a realistic lens. However, its excessive fixation on realism results in tedious gameplay and a story that lacks excitement, ultimately alienating a broader audience. As a consequence, the game will likely only resonate with a niche group of players who have a strong interest in the lives of the Mafia at that time.

Sitting somewhere between the gritty world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the grounded adventure of Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, Mafia: The Old Country is a focused crime drama that plays out like a slick HBO miniseries. Stealth and combat do start to get repetitive as you delve deeper into the Italian underworld but a twisting story and a truly gorgeous setting will keep you coming back for more.

Mafia The Old Country paints an evocative 1902 Sicily with stellar art direction, strong performances, and competent cover shooting. Frequent performance drops, constrained mission design despite a broad map, dated stealth, and repetitive knife encounters erode the momentum, and a finale that fails to deliver undercuts the narrative. A beautiful, ambitious entry that too often frustrates, worth it for the setting, better at a discount.

It’s hard to make the case that its knife fights and shootouts are anything more than functional, and its missions feel slightly too straightforward to befit a franchise once known for its sublime changes of pace. But even with those caveats in mind, it’s still absolutely worth playing for the richness of its setting, and the infectious enthusiasm it has for its grim subject matter.

2K did the right thing by launching it at a relatively budget price, and the release date means there’s little for it to compete with so I’m sure it’ll do well. Still, there’s something here. It’s a solid B game. It’ll keep you pushing through for its short runtime and then you’ll turn it off and you’ll fuhgeddaboudit pretty quickly.

Mafia: The Old Country offers a compelling mob story, complete with great voice acting and beautiful cinematics, that’s undermined by some bizarre mechanics. Shoddy stealth segments, familiar set-pieces, and vanishingly few opportunities to explore its stunning world make for an entry that’s far from the worst in the series, but falls short of the best.

In spite of all of this, I have enjoyed my time with Mafia: The Old Country. In an age of open-world games with a billion things to do, it’s nice to be guided along a handcrafted linear story. I just so desperately wish the gameplay better held a candle to the direction and cinematic flair of the cutscenes, whose luxurious quality and intimacy are the real standout of the show.

What matters in short games like Mafia The Old Country are memorable scenes, plot twists, and good ideas. There has to be something that sticks in your memory. In this case, what we'll remember is the unusual setting, some endearing characters, and the last third, which may be a little all over the place, but which shows us that Hanger 13 has resources and knows how to keep us on the edge of our seats with palpable narrative tension that grabs you by the gut and fast-paced gameplay. So why isn't this the case for the whole game? Mafia The Old Country isn't bad, it's good but just too conventional to stand out and will struggle to be remembered, unlike its predecessors. Nevertheless, it remains a very cinematic experience that will undoubtedly delight fans of the series.

Mafia: The Old Country is at its best when things slow down, letting you take in all the sights and sounds of Sicily. Like previous Mafia games, it nails the look and feel of its real-world counterpart by investing heavily in the details. Unfortunately, generic gameplay and dated mission design hold Mafia: The Old Country back, making it feel like a relic of the early 2010s.

Mafia: The Old Country is a game at war with itself. None of the pieces it puts down fit together to form a unified picture. It lacks any standout gameplay system to build around, nor a strong character with clear motivations to give the game a distinct identity. It is a game that feels torn between multiple different directions, with the only piece left unscathed being the strong performances, an authentic historical setting, and the writing of the supporting cast. However, that can't hold up a barebones gameplay experience and narrative hook that takes way too long to take hold. This is one offer you can safely refuse.

Though it’s a beautiful game, with an excellent Sicilian dub to boot, [Mafia: The Old Country] unfortunately leaves a lot on the Don’s table, failing to rise to the promise of its premise.

Mafia: The Old Country is a perfectly decent action game. It's clear that the ambition was to offer some kind of hybrid between linear and open world gameplay. The developers wanted to tighten up the experience to make it engaging, well-directed, and grandiose, but even though I personally worship open worlds, I would have preferred to see them lean even more towards streamlining this. In an action game of this kind, which is also quite short, I simply think that there should have been more variety and a significantly higher tempo to make it feel more engaging in the end.

Mafia: The Old Country plays it regrettably safe, while still delivering a serviceable crime story prequel.

Mafia: The Old Country isn't a bad game, just a tepid one. Its gameplay is flaccid and restrictive, its narrative is dull and predictable, and its world has no more charm or presence than an Unreal Engine tech demo. It nails the bare minimum, but a game like this, from a franchise as beloved as Mafia, should have gone beyond that.