A game like Mafia: The Old Country – a game about crime, debt, and clawing for a better life – will inevitably face comparisons. The obvious choice is Grand Theft Auto, but beyond guns, crimes, and cars, they two are worlds apart. Scratch that. They’re about as far apart as New York and Sicily.
Storytelling sit front and center, and if you’re not ready for a dark, morally gray ride, Mafia isn’t about to give you time to adjust. Much like joining the mafia, once you hit start, your life is no longer your own. Your decisions are made for you. And if you step out of line, you will pay.
The adventure is pleasant enough if you know what you’re getting into, but if you’re hoping for levity – hell, if you’re just hoping to smile more than a few times – Old Country might not be for you. It’s cold. Dark. Dirty. And, spoiler alert: there are no happy endings for mafioso. The cycle of blood leads only to more pain and suffering.
Mafia: The Old Country is available on Steam, PS5, and Xbox for $49.99.
Story – Family Takes Sacrifice
I’m going to divide the story into two halves. First, what worked for me.
What I Liked
I feel like I need to make this clear – Mafia: The Old Country is my first Mafia game. I went in expecting some darkness – shame, revenge, retribution – but I wasn’t ready for just how heavy it would get. It isn’t just about crime and the lust for power; the game examines the inescapability of poverty, the constant demands of loyalty to a family, and how hard it can be to survive in a life you didn’t choose. The sheer depth of melancholy caught me off guard and, honestly, it wasn’t an easy ride.
You play as Enzo, a carusu — a mine boy — working in the Spadaro Mines. You’re barely more than a slave, stealing the food you’ve already earned just to survive. When a cave-in takes the life of your best friend — the one you dreamed of escaping to America with — you lash out at the foreman in a knife fight and flee soon after. That’s how you stumble into Don Torriso’s territory, and, as you quickly learn, the Don doesn’t take kindly to uninvited Spadaros. That’s the moment Mafia: The Old Country drags you into the Sicilian underworld and never lets you go.
From there, Mafia plunges you into a web of crime, passion, love, and betrayal. Enzo falls for the Don’s daughter, Isabella, but much like Enzo, her life is not her own. The writing leans heavily into themes of family, debt, and ambition. The relationships feel personal and layered, especially between Enzo and the Don’s daughter, Isabella. Both are trapped by the expectations placed on them — Enzo bound to the Don’s will, Isabella bound to her family’s traditions. The result is a love story threaded through violence and loyalty, where every small victory feels earned, and every quiet moment together feels like it might be their last.
Surely a debt to the Don is easily repaid and never has a downside, right?
What Disappointed Me
Spoiler alert for this section: The Old Country really left a bad taste in my mouth with its ending. The game is linear, despite the “open world.” Every mission, every cutscene builds toward one thing: blood. For all that passion and depth, Mafia: The Old Country stumbles in the final stretch. The ending left me feeling like everything I’d fought for was pointless. Enzo spends the whole game clawing his way up the ranks. Surviving impossible odds. Sacrificing everything for the family… only for the payoff to feel hollow.
Despite becoming a made-man, and, quite frankly, a one-man massacre machine that can solo entire warehouses, the most poignant moments left me feeling robbed. Chasing the man that ruined you life, even winning a knife fight against him, it should have felt cathartic. But Enzo is overtaken in the cutscene and saved by a bullet from someone else. With all the killing I’d done in Mafia, I couldn’t believe they took the most important, meaningful ones away from me.
And that’s really it, isn’t it? By the time the credits rolled, it wasn’t just that the story was tragic – I expected tragedy. It’s that the tragedy felt inevitable and predetermined in a way that made my efforts meaningless. You can pour hours into helping Enzo build his standing, protect Isabella, and dream of a life beyond blood and loyalty… but Mafia never really lets you believe he can escape it. That might be the point, sure, but it left me more bitter than reflective.
Even Isabella gets in on the stabbing.
Gameplay – You Belong to the Family
There’s a lot to unpack about this game, so let me break this into three sections. What they nail, what they fumble, and what makes me scream.
The Good – Perks of the Family
The core loop in Mafia: The Old Country is simple, but pretty satisfying. You’ll spend a lot of your time sneaking around like you’re Ezio from Assassin’s Creed… which I suppose is apt since you’re in Italia. Gunplay feels good and tossing bottles or coins to distract enemies makes you feel clever.
Mafia has a lot of fun little details throughout it, clever tricks that help you play while keeping you immersed. My favorite has to be the road signs that always point in the direction of your target location – something that saved me more than once. And the charm system – utilizing a rosary to assign stat boosting beads – was unique and kinda fun! It’s not often that deep Catholic reverence mixes with fun gameplay perks.
Enjoy the horseback sections, they disappear quickly.
The Bad – The Open World That Isn’t
The gameplay boils down to a simple cycle: a long cutscene to set the stage, drive to the location, sneak in alone, stealth or shoot your way through, and knife fight a boss. Over and over and over. In fact, when the game does break up the monotony with a single horse race, a single car race, or a single back-of-the-wagon-pursuit shoutout, it just reminds you that you’ll never do that again. Mafia: The Old Country has so much to offer but lets your taste so little.
The world is huge and beautiful. Newspapers, trinacria, letters, saint cards, and photo spots litter the world, but you’re never given an opportunity to explore them. Oh! Did you want to shop or turn in the few collectibles you got? Too bad, because missions often immediately drop you into a scenario that doesn’t let you roam. And when Mafia does let you explore, it’s a chore to track collectibles down as the game doesn’t have a mini-map.
If all that isn’t bad enough, Mafia is also very rigid about your weapon and vehicle loadouts. Did you spend a bunch of Dinari buying awesome guns or amazing cars? Great! But you’re at a wedding so you didn’t bring it with you – hope you’re okay with a random pistol. Oh, and the Don wants to be driven in his car. Mafia forces you to play it’s way so often, I wonder why I was allowed to buy anything at all!
There are tons of collectibles hidden across the world.
The Ugly – Che Brutto!
Listen. I don’t ask a lot from my games, but on normal difficulty I feel like there should be some challenge. That gameplay loop I mentioned before has loops within it, one being the stealth sections. As much as I love stealth takedowns, every mission has the same issue. The enemies rarely patrol, face away from you constantly, and when there’s a pair of them chatting, wait. One will wander off and leave the other vulnerable. And the boxes you hide bodies in? They were so prevalent I could sometimes see one while I was using another. Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t so much challenge you as it serves up bodies on a platter.
I’m all for being a one-man wrecking crew. But after ten chapters, I really start to wonder why the Don would have any issues with me. I killed Grand Theft Auto levels of enemies by myself. And yet, I still get betrayed the moment I look at his daughter. With wave after wave of mafiosos, polizia, and even Torriso’s own men dead at my feet, Mafia expects me to believe that he thinks there’s more than one way it all ends.
And to wrap it all up, despite what I’m sure was a lot of work put into it, I couldn’t stand the knife fights. If it wasn’t the mechanics, it was the logic. Literally every mission ends with a knife fight. Not only does it get old, it makes Mafia predictable. With so many guns and everyone – Enzo included – willing to do dishonorable things, not one person thought to Indiana Jones these fights?
The enemies a very polite and turn their back on you constantly.
Graphics & Audio – Sweet Sounds and Serene Sights
I actually have good things to say in this area! If Mafia: The Old Country does one thing right, it’s the atmosphere. From the voice acting, the casual Italian profanity, and the music, all the way to the Sicilian countryside and the gorgeous graphics, this game is beautiful. I was so enamored by the world that I was legitimately disappointed that they game didn’t let me explore it more.
As far as graphics go, be warned. My PC is no slouch (I ran Baldur’s Gate 3 on Epic settings while streaming!) and I still had to turn down the settings to near minimum. Are the graphics warranted? Probably not. They were pretty, don’t get me wrong, but there’s nothing I saw in Mafia that made me wish I could experience it in 4k. Still, your mileage may vary.
As for the music? Che bello! From the engaging soundtrack to the record player Cesare decided to take on a drunken joy ride, all the music was gorgeous. But most importantly for The Old Country, it immersed me. I felt like I was there. I felt the era. The sound of the puttering automobiles. The church bells at the wedding. And si! The music! It was the most redeeming feature of the game by far. Perhaps this should’ve been a movie instead? Wait…
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- Cars immediately replace horses.
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- The initial story is intriguing, if a bit predictable.
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- Get used to this. You’ll be doing it A LOT.
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- God, these two are so cute together!
Mafia: The Old Country was reviewed on PC.
