Mafia: The Old Country is by no means bad, but lackluster gameplay and good but not great writing make it unremarkable. The atmospheric early hours and the lovingly detailed Sicilian valley it’s set in make for a world that feels immersive, but the latter half of the narrative can’t help but go through the motions of every trope of the Mafia genre, even when the gameplay offers potential story deviations. Instead, it sticks with the tropes, resulting in a flat ending you’ve been expecting for most of the runtime.
Mafia: The Old Country
Developer: Hangar 13
Price: $50
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S (reviewed), PlayStation 5, and PC
Mafia: The Old Country follows the journey of Enzo, a young man enslaved in a sulfur mine after his father sold him to pay off debts. Following a harrowing escape, Enzo finds himself employed as a farmhand at the Torrisi Vineyard before ultimately joining the crime family. The early hours of Mafia: The Old Country are where it shines the most, a contemplative and atmospheric walk through the menial tasks Enzo must take on early in his crime career.
The Sicilian Valley Mafia: The Old Country exists in a smaller open world, but it’s lovingly detailed. The longer I spent in the valley, the more I grew to recognize every road, building, and turn, something that just doesn’t happen with massive, sprawling open worlds. The first half of the game is defined by this, with Enzo not receiving a loaded gun until several chapters into the experience. This creates such a strong immersion early in the game, something you can add further to by playing with the Sicilian voice acting.
Unfortunately, after the early hours of simple tasks and horse riding, Enzo gets more involved in the crime family, which is where it lost me. The beats here are practically tropes in the genre: the fail-nephew Cesare you work with, who believes he will be running the show, despite everyone constantly dragging him for being lazy and stupid, who ultimately becomes your friend. Isabella, the Don’s daughter, falls for Enzo, despite their love being forbidden, and your trusty mentor Luca is a bit too soft for the business.
After the slow-burning atmospheric story in the early hours, Mafia: The Old Country sets up a paint-by-colors Mafia story, with each twist and turn playing out exactly how you would expect once you get the full narrative setup. While not everything needs to reinvent the genre it’s working in, neither the performances nor the writing elevate this beyond a rehash. Neither is bad, but they also would feel right at home in a forgettable but watchable season of television.
The gameplay also picks up, mixing in third-person shooting and stealth sequences. If you have played any third-person narrative action-adventure game, you know exactly how playing these sections in Mafia: The Old Country feels, with shooting that is just barely good enough to not be a slog, and a stealth system designed with such a singular path forward you began to question the point of this also not just being a cutscene. There are a few exciting sequences, and the occasional car race or driving sequences at least break up the pace. There were a few points where I was overly frustrated by the combat, but there isn’t a single sequence that felt memorable either.
The other gameplay modes are the knife fights, which are more interesting in theory than in practice. You have a slash, stab, parry, dodge, and strong attack, and while each enemy feels a bit unique in their approach, you never get anything new or unexpected in these fights. They almost always end with a clunky transition to a cutscene that makes it feel like the fight I just had didn’t have any impact on how this sequence played out. Again, nothing deeply frustrating or overly tedious, but not exactly exciting either.
As the story goes further and further, and the gameplay missions become a bit more ridiculous, the straightforward narrative beats begin to feel extra frustrating. Enzo becomes a one-man wrecking crew, and his feats become so ridiculous that it’s obnoxious that no one else acknowledges this outside of remarking on how reliable you are. There are points where the only reason your crime family has anything going for it is purely thanks to Enzo’s actions, which makes the inevitable fall just feel especially flat.
Mafia: The Old Country makes its inevitable conclusion obvious to you early on, but despite the amount of time you have to develop relationships between the characters, for most of them their final actions don’t quite line up with the relationships shown and it drags out its conclusion despite how obvious it is, that by the time I made it through the final sequence and credits rolled, I was just frustrated that the narrative didn’t have even one fresh idea to offer me.
The lack of any real acknowledgement of just how important Enzo has been to the Torrisi crime family’s ventures is felt in the conclusion itself. It feels like a fantastic moment for Enzo to make a grand stand and to point out the hypocrisy of those who profited off his hard work, refusing him the respect he so obviously deserves.
That lack of respect and acknowledgment is another trope of the Mafia genre, but when the character on the receiving end of that is the only person of any importance in the entire operation. I don’t want to spoil any of Enzo’s exploits, but he truly saves the Torrisi crime family from extinction, and nobody seems to care at all, including Enzo. The narrative-focused action-adventure genre is often guilty of having incongruous gameplay and cutscenes, but some of Enzo’s most impactful actions come in the cutscenes, so there really isn’t an excuse.
The Final Word
The saving grace of Mafia: The Old Country is its linear focus. There is not a single point in this game where I was asked to explore the large open map or search for some resource to get arbitrary upgrades. This linear focus and a 10-hour run time kept me from ever getting frustrated or annoyed with my experience, even if I never felt particularly engaged throughout. I’m not mad that I spent my time with Mafia: The Old Country, but for such a focused experience to feel so bland is ultimately disappointing.
MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
