Review of Mafia: The Old Country — crime chronicles of Sicily

The Mafia series has always been distinguished by its attention to historical detail and strong stories. From the first installment, which set the standard for the genre, to the more modern sequel with more freedom of action in the third installment. The Mafia games have gone from chamber gangster dramas to open-world experiments. Against this backdrop, the latest Mafia: The Old Country by Hangar 13 is perceived as a conscious return to the roots. This is a clear attempt to focus on a linear story again, but with a new cultural focus for the franchise. We will tell you whether it was successful and whether the game is worth your attention in this review.

Plot of Mafia: The Old Country

Mafia: The Old Country takes the player to Sicily in 1904, where the story revolves around Enzo — a miner forced to look for a new path in life after a tragedy in the sulfur mines. The guy is accidentally rescued from certain problems at work by the Torrisi family, whom he wants to serve and thank for saving him. It all starts with small favors, but gradually the family’s affairs involve Enzo in local political and criminal intrigues.

It’s cool that the scriptwriters wove real historical events into their fictional drama, and it definitely adds realism to the plot. Of course, you don’t know about it when you’re playing, but when you learn the details, it makes the story feel more voluminous. At least that’s how it felt for me.
The structure of Mafia: The Old Country is linear, there is no open world, which brings gamers back to the origins of the series and creates a chamber, but very rich feeling and perception of the world of early 20th century Sicily.

The local story develops slowly and is divided into fourteen chapters. Its unhurried development allows us to understand the motives of the characters, and key moments are revealed in unexpected small scenes.

In the first chapters, the authors failed to interest me in the character of Enzo himself, who will blossom later, but Don Torrisi turned out very well, as did his consigliere Tino. Their charisma is combined with cold calculation and a hidden threat. The complicated relationship between Tino and Enzo adds an additional psychological dimension to the story, which will lead to a dramatic conclusion.

The dialogues and acting in Mafia: The Old Country create a sense of a living world where honor and family are more important than money. The actors give their all here, so if you watch only the cutscenes separately, it will not be a serious mafia movie with the appropriate tension and cinematography.

I didn’t figure out the ending of the story, but I just knew it was going to be bad. And so it was, but they added a love story, reflections on the search for oneself and the real price of power, raised several complex topics, etc. The plot of the game will definitely not surprise experienced gamers and fans of the series, but the story is definitely enjoyable and strong enough to keep the player in suspense and make them play on without stopping.

Gameplay Mafia: The Old Country

The passage of Mafia: The Old Country took me 13 hours, but this time can be shortened or increased. The local pace is constantly changing: from leisurely walks and dialogues to intense shootouts and stealth missions. However, the latter often allows you to break and break through enemies with weapons.

The missions are clearly structured, and there are no side quests in the game. There will be only a few moments of free exploration, and they are quite restrictive. But even this becomes a real gift for those who want to dive deeper into the local wonderful atmosphere of Sicily. Throughout the game, you will still be able to visit artisan workshops, markets, and taverns, listen to NPC conversations that add depth to the world. But all of this will be within the framework of story missions, which can be stretched out a bit by leisurely strolling from quest to quest.

At the beginning of the game, Enzo will ride horses and even take part in local horse races. Later on in the story, the hero will have early cars with a characteristic strangely complex control physics. The further the game develops, the better and more diverse cars the hero will be able to drive. In practice, the game will also offer a horse or a car to get to the task, but I probably don’t need to explain why I always chose a car. Most other players will probably do the same. In some places, the game does give Enzo a horse, on which he rides for just a few minutes, and then we don’t actually meet these beautiful creatures anymore.

For masochists, there’s a realistic driving mode that adds to the complexity of the controls. In the basic mode, the car is already constantly skidding, but here it almost stops obeying the player. At least, that’s what I got from this driving experience, so after a few trips that annoyed me to no end, I switched to the normal driving mode. That’s why I advise you not to touch this slider in the settings at all.

Collecting rosaries is not difficult in the first hours of the game, but the available bonuses do not affect the gameplay and combat at all. At least I didn’t feel any noticeable difference or improvement with the bonuses for driving, dodging, or other elements.

The game also has a useless map and two types of currencies that can be used to buy horses, cars, clothes, and customize all of it. They can be used to buy weapons, but the hero will get them in the story. They also drop from enemies, so you can get comfortable with powerful weapons from the very first mission and not worry about it at all. Moreover, the difference between the models is minimal in action, except that these pistols, rifles, and knives look different. But we’ll talk about that in the section below.

Enzo will also open a safe twice during the game, the code for which he will find right next to it. The hero can read notes, newspapers, and letters that dot almost every room. This adds depth to the plot and sometimes explains certain moments. But there seem to be too many of these notes and papers scattered around.

In general, all of the small mechanics described above, such as collecting rare items, rosaries, money, or letters, seem to be underdeveloped or just added for the sake of conventional variety. They do not affect the main storyline and do not diversify the gameplay much. Still, let’s assume that those who appreciate collectibles in games might like all this. But how many of you are like that? I think not many. Especially in a storyline game about the mafia.

Combat system Mafia: The Old Country

The combat system of Mafia: The Old Country consists of three elements: stealth, gunfights, and knife fights. Stealth is casual and sometimes a bit strange. The local system of hiding from enemies is intuitive and quite simple. However, sometimes the AI of the guard notices the hero through the wall, and sometimes does not see the character Enzo sneaking right in front of his nose. Also, the checkpoints are not conveniently located, because sometimes after death you have to go through a rather long segment of the mission, and sometimes the hero is thrown literally to the place where he just died or got caught. I couldn’t track the logic behind why it was done this way in one place and differently in another.
Local stealth will definitely not appeal to fans of this mode, but it adds variety and, most importantly, logically explains certain actions of Enzo.

Shooting here is relatively convenient and fun, but still the game is far from the benchmark for me in this regard, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. Although it is from this and similar games Mafia: The Old Country took several spectacular action scenes where the hero has to run away, and everything around him is collapsing, burning and exploding. Very cool and spectacular moments that don’t seem to have been in any of the previous installments of the series.

The enemy AI is adequate and definitely not stupid. They know how to go around the flags and attack together, they know how to dodge, swing a knife at close range, and move away. Therefore, it is definitely not easy to fight with the local computer, although a few times certain enemies behaved strangely.

The difficulty is probably also due to the deliberately poor aiming, because the weapons were not perfect in those days. However, in the game’s settings, at least on PS5, you can significantly improve the aiming, but I didn’t do it, because it would clearly be something on the level of a cheat.

This mechanic definitely diversifies the gameplay, with parrying, dodging, and several types of attacks, and it has some historical roots, when Italians really did fight with knives. However, sometimes, especially in plot points where the characters shoot and then drop their weapons and take up knives, this action looks strange and unrealistic.

However, this illogic probably comes from the perspective of a modern person. Because Mafia: The Old Country is a game about loyalty and principles. Often they are strange and specific to the time, but still, Italian mafia kept their word, had rules and principles, and it was a serious crime to betray them. Therefore, such battles with knives are perceived more as a natural part of this world and are definitely a plus of the combat system.

Graphics, bugs, and optimization

Hangar 13 has masterfully captured the architecture, flavor and nature of early twentieth-century Sicily: sunny fields and vineyards, dusty roads, cobblestone streets, old stone buildings, and scattered remnants of the once mighty Roman Empire. The change of weather and time of day creates the effect of a living world, and small details such as shadows from clouds or the movement of laundry on ropes add to the realism. The look of the local sky is a separate topic altogether, because it looks like the real thing. However, the interiors and NPCs remain static, with no complex interaction between them and the player.

I played the game on PlayStation 5. The FPS was always stable, and the game did not glitch at all. I played through the story in Quality mode, because the picture is even worse on Performance, and there’s no need for additional frames at all. Several times during cutscenes I noticed microfreezes for 1-2 seconds. And that’s all the “problems” I had. At the same time, the game did not receive a patch on the first day and did not have any updates at all in the first days after release. That is, it was optimized as much as possible before that.

I haven’t heard anything bad about the PC version of Mafia: The Old Country on PC. The game runs stably and doesn’t crash the system. It runs well on not the most powerful systems. Again, probably because of its not-so-cool visuals for 2025.

Music and localization

The soundtracks of Mafia: The Old Country soundtrack is definitely based on folk instruments. You can hear mandolins, accordions, and drums. All this perfectly emphasizes the atmosphere of Sicily and the era of events that unfold before the gamer.

Of course, the music adapts to the situation: it picks up the pace during conflicts, and becomes gentle and melancholy in calm moments. I don’t think I’d listen to these tunes outside of a walkthrough, but these soundtracks definitely work great in the game itself.

Mafia: The Old Country has received a textual Ukrainian localization, for which we would like to thank the developers and the publisher. I liked it and didn’t notice any problems or errors. But I’ve heard from others that it was supposedly machine-translated a bit and some minor typos were found. But overall, it’s fine.

Prices Mafia: The Old Country

Mafia: The Old Country is available in several versions. The basic Standard Edition is sold at a price of 1999 UAH. There is a separate Deluxe Edition — a digital version where two packages of cosmetic items (Padrino Pack and Gatto Nero Pack), as well as a digital artbook and soundtrack are added to the standard set. This version costs from 2499 UAH.

And this may be the biggest disadvantage of the game, because it costs quite a lot, but it is not a full-fledged AAA game. Some gamers will definitely be scared off by the price tag, while others will simply wait for a discount, which they are also entitled to.