The Mafia series of games has always benefitted from a strong sense of time and place. As a Chinese immigrant, I’d often find ways to connect to these games, even if I didn’t directly associate with the focus on Italian crime families. From the Chinatown area in the first Mafia to the Triads in Mafia II, I always felt a sense of authenticity running through the series. Mafia III’s shift away from Italian-American protagonists to focus on a Black man navigating the racism of the criminal underworld in late-1960s America was perhaps most authentic of all, holding forces that still shape our society today up to the light and examining the violence inherent in them.
The latest entry, Mafia: The Old Country, has neither the immigrant perspective nor the racial tensions that underscored the previous games. Instead, class dynamics and the plight of workers are at the heart of the story it tells about the mob in 1904 Sicily. It’s bolstered by memorable characters and wonderfully authentic performances, though it’s dragged down by dated gameplay mechanics.
The story follows Enzo Favara, a worker who one day hopes to find a better life in America by saving up enough money to buy his freedom. One day, the sulfur mine he toils in collapses, causing the death of his friend Gaetano underneath rubble. Themes of revolution and working class rights are front and center during Mafia: The Old Country’s opening hours.
After slaving away for meager pennies his entire life up until that point and witnessing Gaetano’s demise, Enzo finally musters up the courage to confront the mine underboss, II Merlo of the Spadaro crime family. Finding himself overpowered, Enzo manages to escape and unwittingly crosses into the territory of the Torrisi crime family. Il Merlo gives chase but the crime family’s Don, Bernardo Torrisi, saves Enzo just as he’s about to be finished off. The Don tells a fearful Il Merlo off as he was caught in Torrisi territory and risks being the spark that ignites a war between the two crime families. Sensing the Don’s influence and power, Enzo eventually accepts his offer to join the Torrisi crime family, seeing it as the golden ticket he’s been searching for to get out of the poor working conditions he grew up in.
Welcome to the family
After joining the family, it’s not long before Enzo finds himself at the opposite end of the labor struggle. Acting as an enforcer, he breaks up a union’s strike to keep order for the Don. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition that foreshadows Enzo’s dark descent into mob life, but this aspect feels a bit underbaked. Whereas the recent animated film Transformers One carried its concerns about exploited workers through to its stirring climax in a more explicit manner, The Old Country, by contrast, uses those themes as more of a subtext for Enzo’s eventual realization that his involvement with the Torrisi family comes with its own kind of exploitation. A noble aim, but the way it’s executed, it feels as if The Old Country tosses these ideas and all their resonant power aside in favor of a more conventional, albeit well-told, crime story about trying to make it out and leave the life of crime behind for good.
Still, the story does eventually coalesce in a satisfactory way. As you progress, each of the Don’s requests get bloodier and more dangerous until Enzo realizes that he’s nothing but a means to an end, a tool just like any other worker. Ironically, before the end, Enzo learns that the path he’s chosen, which seemed one that might lead him to liberation and luxury, has only made his life much more limited than it likely would have been if he’d stayed in the mines.
Enzo’s late friend Gaetano had a postcard his uncle had sent him from Empire Bay, Mafia II’s setting and a fictional recreation of East Coast metropolitan areas like New York City. In it, Gaetano’s uncle wrote that upon their arrival in the U.S., he’d feed them steak and eggs, a huge step up from the paltry bread rations they received while working in the mines. And as the years go by, Enzo still carries it with him, as a memento of his friend and the dream they shared, and as inspiration to achieve his goal of reaching America. It’s a powerful motivator for Enzo, and as he gets more and more pulled into the business, it takes on the poignant power of the unattainable. It also chips away at the hyper-masculine allure that mafia media tends to give its leading figures with shows of power, control, and dominance, allowing us to sympathize more with Enzo as the story progresses.
Ultimately, Enzo’s tale is a tragedy. Of course he has no knowledge that on the other side of the pond, Italian immigrants are also facing marginalization and poor economic conditions, driving some of them to join organized crime groups like the American mafia. Sure, a steak and eggs meal sounds nice, but not all that glitters is gold. Even if he did make it to American shores, Enzo could potentially find himself stuck in a similar situation in America, looking for a way out of organized crime again. No matter what path he takes or where he goes, he’ll always face insurmountable odds that keep him from living the carefree and rich life that he imagined. These strong narrative threads kept my interest in The Old Country from waning, turning its story into much more than just a series of cutscenes meant to support the middling gameplay moments in between. Through Enzo, we can see how he and so many others poured their blood, sweat, and tears into struggling to achieve a dream when it was really just a mere fantasy.
Though the story has its ups and downs, it benefits throughout from the fantastic supporting cast and the stellar performances from the voice actors. Among the Torrisi crime family, the bold attitude of Enzo’s best buddy Cesare brings out the bloodthirstiness within our protagonist, while mentor Luca imparts wisdom to Enzo to make sure he doesn’t get in way over his head. The Don is the most stereotypically mob-like of the bunch, with his focus on family and loyalty over everything, but the interactions between the characters make them feel like more than just typical organized crime members.
In the English track, all of the voice actors speak in heavy Italian accents, but not in a way that feels insultingly stereotypical or harmful. In fact, it adds to the authenticity that the Mafia franchise is known for. The Sicilian dub is also excellent, and can heighten your immersion. Fair warning though, the characters’ lip-synching doesn’t match up nearly as well in that one as in the English dub.
Going back in time, in more ways than one
While the narrative and characters have their compelling qualities, when it comes to gameplay, every single aspect of The Old Country feels like something from the late 2000s or early 2010s. There’s just not much depth to any of it.
There are bog-standard stealth sequences akin to those in The Last of Us. You just sneak up behind your enemies and then choke them out. Enzo even has his obligatory “radar” mode, called instinct mode, that lets him see enemies through walls. The dumb enemy AI doesn’t do these sections any favors either, as they stupidly fall for the coins and bottles that Enzo can throw as distractions. For a game with revolutionary themes, the stealth mechanics are anything but. To make matters worse, there are a few stealth sections that result in an instant game over if you get caught, and those are never fun.
Then, of course, there are all-out gunfights, and the guns you get to use are fine for what they are. Your pick of the litter includes pistols, rifles, and shotguns–naturally there are none of Mafia III’s rocket launchers and C4 chargers here to really make things explosive. The gunplay itself plays out like your run-of-the-mill cover shooter—Uncharted, for instance. In that game, as in this one, I would just duck in and out of cover to pop enemies in the head and continue on. Occasionally here in The Old Country, a lone enemy might approach me or a grenade might be thrown to flush me out of my cover, but these were hardly any challenge (even on Hard difficulty) and didn’t really result in invigorating shootouts.
Finally, there are the knife fights, which are usually reserved for cinematic moments and pit you against major antagonists. Though meant to be pivotal dramatic confrontations, in practice they’re quite underwhelming and mostly involve waiting for the boss to strike so you can parry them and slash back. I often found myself repeating this same strategy to win. You can also break your opponent’s guard, but in my experience the spacing never felt quite right. During the final boss fight I’d have a sizable distance between us, but my guard break attack would somehow always connect, even though it didn’t look like it did. Still, I took those victories in stride as I just wanted to get the whole thing over with.
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BACK-OF-THE-BOX QUOTE
“A deal you probably can refuse.”
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TYPE OF GAME
Third-person narrative-driven action-adventure.
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LIKED
Good story, great characters, culturally authentic.
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DISLIKED
Dated gameplay, half-assed open world.
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DEVELOPER
Hangar 13
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PLATFORMS
PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S (played)
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RELEASE DATE
August 8, 2025
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PLAYED
About 18 hours. Cleared the game on hard difficulty. Found a good amount of collectibles and unlocked most chapter-specific achievements.
Mafia: The Old Country has similarities with the first Mafia game, such as a tacked-on and limited open world that players can explore either in between main objectives or in a “Free Roam” mode. The biggest issue with this option is that while there are some landmarks here and there that you can take photos of, there’s not much else to do besides go around and pick up collectibles. There are no side quests or mini-games to participate in. This is a weird thing to say given that Mafia III was criticized for its open-world bloat and Mafia: The Old Country’s streamlined approach is welcome. The open world is an unnecessary half-measure; the game should have leaned even more fully into a linear structure similar to Max Payne 3-style mission design and done away with the option to tool around its lifeless, uninteresting world altogether.
Mafia: The Old Country’s story was good enough to keep me engaged to the end with its authentic portrayal of 1900s Sicily and its superb characters. It’s too bad, however, that while the narrative traveled backwards in time for its new setting, the gameplay mechanics went along with them.
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