I usually do not bother taking time to write reviews, but I feel like doing it this time around. I have played Mafia 3 on PC for around 40hrs now and taken my time to explore the world as well as knock off story missions. I still got a few districts and one capo to go, but I believe I have played enough to get an idea of what Mafia 3 is and what it is not.

So, right off the bat, I can say that Mafia 3 is consistent. Is it consistently good? Well, no. It is not. But it does deliver a solid story-driven and consistent experience with its many shortcomings and few bright moments. As a fan of the Mafia series (and true gangster movies in general), I cannot say that I was too hyped for this edition taking us into the world of Lincoln and his story of revenge. I guess to me a perfect Mafia game would go somewhere along the lines of Mafia 2. Starting out as a piss poor Italian immigrant and working your way up in organized crime, eventually becoming a made man and having money, influence and reputation. However, I do respect the artistic direction the developers have taken by going with Lincoln and his story. It is has kept me playing for 40h, so I guess it is safe to say that is not bad. In fact, I think the story might just be the strongest element of this game.

There are some other pros as well, as listed below:

• Weapons (and shooting) feel(s) oddly satisfying and reminiscent of some older (read: better) Hitman games;
  
• Cover system works pretty darn well;
  
• The stealth approach actually works as opposed to GTA V. So, using silenced weapons makes sense;
  
• Soundtrack is great (although it does get a bit repetitive rather soon);
  
• The environment and setting of New Orleans in this particular period seems authentic;
  
• Districts feel distinct and authentic;
  
• Cut scenes are nicely done and help flesh out the game (voice acting is actually better than I expected);
  
• Connection to real life events back in the day (news on radio, articles in Hot Rod and Playboy, depiction of racism, etc.) make the experience more immersive;

That being said, as a rather demanding gamer, I would not in good conscience recommend this game to my friends! Why? Well, let us get started on the negative. Shall we?

• The worst PC port of any AAA game in living memory. I mean, for crying out loud, Metal Gear Solid has been a console-only franchise for almost 20 years and even they did a decent job on the port for MGS V (UI aside);
  
• Bad port leads to questionable optimization and performance issues. In max settings, it runs around 45 fps on 980ti and i5-4690k. I get better frames in both GTA V and Witcher 3 (ultra settings), for comparison. And while this game looks okay, it does not even come close to Witcher 3 in the graphics department;
  
• Graphics. Overall, it does not look bad. It is just, in this case, paradoxically inconsistent. Bayou looks gorgeous, especially during sunrise or sunset. Car models, however, leave a lot to be asked for. Especially in terms of LODs. Oh yeah.. and to say that lighting and reflections are bad would be an understatement;
  
• Vehicle damage modelling and virtually non-existent deformation! I mean it has to be a joke right? The first Mafia had about the same level of vehicle deformation 12 freaking years ago! This is quite possibly the most disappointing aspect of this game. We are on "next-gen" with all this processing power, etc. and the developer was unable or unwilling to make a proper vehicle damage and deformation system for the open world game that has vehicles as one of its central elements;
  
• AI is sub-par as well. The enemy combat AI provides a lackluster challenge even on the hardest setting. Also, it does not respond at all to screaming and running civilians who should be an obvious indication that something fishy is taking place. While the NPCs manage the driving pretty well (except your gun delivery guy or cash collector girl), the pedestrians tend to be completely ignorant to the moving cars and environment around them;
  
• Game design. Eliminating the lower level gangsters and racket bosses and doing the wiretaps gets very repetitive really fast. It just lacks variety. I understand it is an open world game, but some memorable scripted missions are always great. The missions to eliminate Olivia and Lou were good. I just feel that Mafia 3 does not quite have the right balance between meaningful open world activities and high quality scripted story-telling;
  
• Intrusive HUD. If the aim is to build a nice looking open world, why on earth would you want to break the immersion with ridiculous HUD elements like the GPS "road signs" in Mafia 3? It is not quite as intrusive and bad of a solution as Watch Dogs had for its GPS, but it is still pretty darn disturbing. Wouldn't the GTA V-style radar-based navigation be enough?;
  
• No option to have multiple saves;
  
• Multiple CTDs and obvious bugs within the game world itself (cars driving around with open doors, enemy ragdolls getting stuck in the walls, etc);
  
• User interface in menus. Again, due to being a console port;

Now to the (great) parts from the previous games that were for some unfortunate reason not included in this one:

• Enforcement of traffic laws by police. Getting a ticket for speeding or running a red light, made the previous Mafia games feel immersive and set them apart from GTA series. It was a nice way of interacting with the police other than getting shot by them. Back in the days of the first Mafia game, it was a cool innovation that made the player feel that the environment responded to player's actions in a realistic manner. Makes me wonder why the speedometer (another intrusive HUD element) was added to this game at all;
  
• Vehicle and clothing based search warrants. It was a nice system of how the police was able to recognize you in 2 different ways once the line of sight was lost. In this edition, you just need to get out of the "magic" circle and suddenly there is no interest in your crime anymore;
  
• The fuel system, while sometimes tedious, was also a nice element that increased immersion;

What I feel this game is missing:

• More (micro)management of your conquered territories and your own organization and capos. You just give the districts to your capos and that is it! There is so much potential and replay value there that is just ignored. If only you could try to keep hold of your districts and rackets against other aspiring criminals once the main story is done, etc;
  
• I understand that Lincoln's story is that of revenge and as such he has little interest in anything else. However, once that story is done and The Marcanos are well six feet under or in the bellies of Bayou crocs, it would be nice to spend that hard earned cash on something other than weaponry (such as properties, cars, clothes, etc.). The side story of any Mafia game ought to be making money and rising up in the world and what is the point of that if there is nothing to spend it on?

All in all, Mafia 3 is not a bad game, but unfortunately it is somewhat of a disappointment. Mainly because this game had so much potential, but failed to deliver in many more areas than it got right. It is missing the WOW-factor that the first Mafia game certainly had and that is generally expected from highly marketed open world games and well known franchises of this caliber. It does not excel in any single category and, as such, remains consistent in its mediocrity. The strongest elements of this game are its story-driven campaign and the authentic feel of New Orleans back in the 60s. That it does deliver. Unfortunately, these only get you so far. In spite of the nice open world, it does not seem to have a lot going for it once the story is done. For me, as a hard core fan of the 2 previous Mafia games, it is a definite let-down.

If there were a "Neutral" option on Steam, I would put this game in that category. Unfortunately, I have to choose between "Recommended" and "Not Recommended," and that's tough because my experience with this game was a mix bag of enjoyment but it also boring me to death.

Mafia 3 is a huge departure from Mafia 1 and 2. Those games had that signature "Mafia feel", you were deeply embedded in the mob, experiencing a gripping and linear, story-driven experience that captured the old-school gangster vibe. Mafia 3? Not so much. While you have ties to the mob, you’re not part of it in the same way. Instead, the game shifts gears and leans heavily toward an open-world, GTA-style/Ubisoft formula. This game isn’t inherently bad, but it does cause the game to lose part of what made the Mafia series so unique. The story is really good imo! It’s dark, gritty, and unforgettable! One of the strongest aspects of this game.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is a hufe let down. The missions are painfully repetitive. Taking over districts quickly becomes a chore. You’ll find yourself doing the same types of objectives over and over, and it drags the experience down. Combine that with frequent crashes! I had to restart the game multiple times just to get it running and it can be frustrating.

In the end, Mafia 3 is a good game, but it’s not a good Mafia game. If you go in expecting something like Mafia 1 or 2, you might be disappointed. But if you give it a chance as its own thing, there’s some enjoyment to be found. Just be prepared for the rough edges.

2k Launcher. Hate leaving reviews that don't talk about game but I can no longer play it thanks to launcher. This is my fruitless attempt to give myself some form of relief by punishing them in my small insignificant way.

Good story, still a broken game, and still glitchy achievements! Still not fixed in the end of 2023!

It took me almost 23h but I finished it.
Here's what I think about it after beating it.

Pros:
- Really cool atmosphere of 60s. Huge detailed city and great soundtrack add to it quite a bit.
- Solid story with great characters and awesome voice acting.
- Solid game mechanics - shooting, driving, cover system, etc - all works well, but there's nothing really new about them.

Cons:
- My biggest gripe with it - it doesn't make you feel like you are mafia
- AI is pretty much brain dead. Especially if you are using stealth approach.
- Repetitive samey side-quests that are forced onto you as gates to main quests
- Poor optimisation (performance-wise this game sucks on most machines, even after a bunch of patches)
- Little variety of cars and guns
- Lots of things hidden behind unlocks that are too boring to achieve (wanna get that rocket launcher? be ready to do more side quests, if you are not sick from them yet!)
- Game has a bunch of pretty meaningless unlocks, instead of giving you fun stuff (e.g. unlock to steal cars quietly, that comes after an ability to call in car delivery)
- No fast travel - and since city is big, be ready to spend quite some time traveling around

And in general, the game feels as if they didn't have enough time to finish the game properly.
If they'd allow only doing story missions (the most fun part) and beating the game in ~6h or so - it'd be so much better in my opinion.
Unfortunately, now you have to fight those boring gate-quests to get to fun stuff. Which is.. well, not fun.
I definitely wouldn't recommend buying it at full price. Maybe once it's heavily discounted.

See more detailed explanation of all points (along with some gameplay) in the video:
https://youtu.be/S1Q84XeixcM

Pros:
+Amazing soundtrack
+Very well written plot and characters
+The different city districts all feel unique
+The cutscenes look amazing


Cons:
-All missions (but the prologue) are the same. Rush or sneak in, kill everyone, steal something/interrogate someone/destroy something.
-The weapons all feel kind of weak. A 44. Magnum should feel like a hand-cannon, not an Airsoft gun.
-Most of the cutscenes are not real cutscenes, so no cinematic effects and just two characters moving their badly animated lips.
-The open world looks nice, but you can't do anything but car races and missions.

I can't complain about a ripoff or anything like that since I bought the game for 5 bucks, but as a fan of the original Mafia games I just feel let down. I really want to know how things will end up with Vito and the other characters, or what happened to Joe (Yes, it's revealed in this game), but it's just not worth playing through this grind-fest. If you want to know anything about the story look it up on Youtube.

4/10

From pre-release trailers this game looked to be like a more expansive version of the amazing Mafia II, but no.

Pros:
+The story, like Mafia II's is very well written.
+The facial animations in cutscenes are the only thing the game truly exceeds at.

Cons:
-Gameplays is needlessly dull and repetitive. You know UbiSoft towers? That optional "content" that was basically padded on to every Ubi open world game from 2012-15? That's this entire game essentially, yet somehow worse.
-Speaking of repetitive, you literally go back to the exact same areas and do the exact same things in very short periods of time.
-Something about the gunplay feels off and so does the driving.
-Even on hard, the enemy AI is useless.
-The lack of content that wasn't there at launch despite being shown in trailers like changeable clothes just highlights how much of an unfinished mess this was.
-Despite updates to add new features and slightly improve performance, this game still full of glitches and crashes on a more than capable machine.
-In general, the game looks awful. Its far more bland than the colourful screenshots used in advertisements and the games lighting in infamously abysmal.
-Despite the well written story, there is so much padding between key story missions that I'd forget what was happening.


So yeah, this isn't good. Don't buy it. Not even if it's cheap. It's a sub-par bore-fest.

The Mafia franchise didn't deserve this...

Pros:
-Driving feels weighty and similiar to Mafia 2
-Decent Soundtrack
-Opening couple hours are easily the best part of the game
-Gunplay is acceptable

Cons:
-Graphics are unoptimized and horrible (512x512 textures for a PC release????? really?????)
-To cover for the terrible graphics, they threw a horrible filter+blur over everything
-Gameplay is repetitive. And I mean REALLY Repetitive. Find out who you need to kill, kill their underlings and destroy their products until they get pissed off enough to come out of hiding,then kill them. Rinse and repeat FOR THE ENTIRE GAME.


For a debut game Hanger 13 couldn't have done a worse job

PROS:
- First 3 hours of gameplay are really great and enjoyable.
- America's 60s - New Orleans...ehm..Bordeaux
- America's 60s - Soundtrack!
- America's 60s - Cars!

CONS:
- Pretty much everything else. (Story. Missions. AI. Repetitiveness of game mechanics. You name it.)

Let me be perfectly clear. It's NOT a bad game! It is just very poor Mafia game.
Everyone who played 2 previous titles knows how story-centric these were. You simply can't remove storytelling from Mafia and expect that you will get away with it. Unfortunately, thats exactly how this game feels - like a sprinter who tries to run a marathon. First 3 hours of gameplay are a blast and then entire experience dies slowly. We already have a great sandbox game which does it very well - GTA. Mafia used to be open world story driven game and thats what players expected and didn't get. There is no reason pretending that Mafia is anywhere near to qualities of GTA 5 when it comes to variety of activities.

Result:
Establish Czech development team again, hang budget cutting managers on the nearest tree and let former team do it properly. Unfortunately, Hangar 13 doesn't seem to have a clue about what original Mafia games really were about. If you really like America's 60s its worth a shot, though.

Yet another game where a Mixed review, instead of Recommended/Not Recommended, would be more appropriate.

Where the game shines is its story, cutscenes and voice acting. The first ~2 hours are amazing, with the cutscenes and gameplay elements interwoven to create this incredibly engaging storytelling experience… and then it drops you into the open world, which I will write about a bit later.
The animations within the cutscenes are just incredible. The lip synching, face animations etc. are the best I have seen so far. The textures are incredibly high quality as well. This makes me wish they just focused on the story in a linear fashion like in the previous Mafia games, instead of doing what they ultimately did.
Outside of cutscenes the game looks good, though there are some weird looking instances of draw distance behaving erratically, same for glass and mirror reflections.

Story wise it’s engaging, interesting, presented in a pseudo-documentary with interviews with an aged cast of the game. The interview parts are thrown in periodically throughout the duration of the plot, without ever overstaying their welcome, but being frequent enough as not to let the player forget about them.

Main plot missions are fairly original, definitely more appealing than the open world, with some fantastic set pieces. I won’t spoil anything but, again, this proves they should have spent their time on making the game linear.

All of the above constitutes around 20% of the whole game. The remaining 80% is doing open world tasks:
1. Go to district
2. Talk with quest giver about taking over an enemy racket
3. Do $X of damage to the enemy property by stealing money, killing enforcers, or burning assets within the district
4. Once the $X of damage has been reached, return to the quest giver
5. Get the mission to kill or recruit the racket owner in a building you most likely have already visited doing the $X of damage part of the mission
6. Kill or recruit the racket owner
Do all of the above 17 more times. Yes, you read that right. Seventeen. 9 districts, 2 rackets for each. No matter how good the combat is, how satisfying, vicious and brutal the takedowns are, how many different approaches you have to some of the tasks, you are essentially doing the same stuff again and again. This literally kills Mafia 3. This is the main reason this game has Mixed reviews here on Steam. I never had any technical issues, but that does not matter, since I have to kill the 25th damn enforcer and burn the 132nd box of assets on my way to kill the 13th racket owner.

Another issue I have is how over the top it is compared to other Mafia games. The protagonist, Lincoln, is a great example of it. Instead of being a regular human being like Tommy or Vito, Lincoln is a Vietnam war veteran seeking vengeance for the deaths of his family, who stands at 6 foot 3 inches and looks like he’s 250 pounds of pure muscle. He is able to run head first into a gun fight, eviscerating enemies with his combat knife left and right. If he gets hurt, he can just jam an adrenaline syringe into his arm and continue his rampage largely unimpeded, unless he encounters guys with shotguns. Lincoln is not a Mafia character, he is literally the Punisher. Why is the Punisher the protagonist of a Mafia game?

The DLCs are on the level of the main plot missions, so they’re good, but each of them is only around 2 hours long. They also are over the top, more like GTA than Mafia.

Ultimately, I cannot recommend it, because if you want to enjoy the story elements, you will require a TON of patience. I know I spent much time on it, but I wanted to know if there is any gameplay variation at any point in the game. There is not.