With 2025's best story and mediocre gameplay, Mafia: The Old Country is liked by critics but gets average marks
Criminal action game Mafia: The Old Country has already been released on PC, and in a few hours it will be released on consoles. Fans of the series have been waiting for this game for a long time and tried to understand how Hangar 13 studio would manage this time. Well, as many expected, the results of its work turned out to be ambiguous.
Here's What We Know
Critics published reviews of Mafia: The Old Country, from which it follows that the new game is really much better than the failed third part, but not everyone will like it.
The developers did a great job with the artistic part, the locations of Sicily look great, the characters talk and behave authentically and logically, the graphics are on the level of the best modern games, and in terms of story many experts call Mafia: The Old Country the best game of 2025. The developers tried to repeat the leisurely, but at the same time not long narration style of the first Mafia, and they succeeded, but, unfortunately, not without its minuses.
The main one is the gameplay, which is called boring, banal and mediocre. It's not bad, but in this aspect the game lacks creativity, because almost all mechanics have already been used many times in other third-person action games. Besides, Hangar 13 studio preferred not to move away from the gameplay of Mafia: Definitive Edition (remake of the first part), so all its minuses were transferred to the new game.
As a result, Mafia: The Old Country received the following scores:
- Opencritic - 74 points with 68% of recommendations;
- Metacritic - 76 points (PC).
To summarise, the novelty will appeal to fans of story games and most likely fans of the first two parts of Mafia, but those who are primarily looking for complex and exciting gameplay may be disappointed. However, the situation is saved by the fact that the developers did not tighten the timing, thanks to which the story can be completed in just 10 hours, and during this time the game will not get boring.
Source: Opencritic, Metacritic
