Mafia: The Old Country brings down its amazing story with lackluster gameplay

Mafia: The Old Country delivers one of the best stories in a video game this year, but not much else. This series from Borderlands publisher 2K has a fascinating history and four games that are radically different in design, setting, and flaws. Yet, they are all about how people’s lives are fundamentally changed, and often ruined, by organized crime.

The fourth installment takes place in 1900s Sicily, following a forbidden love as someone from nothing rises up the mafia’s ranks. While the game’s story is compelling and the setting is well-realized, The Old Country fails to leave a lasting impact. Incredibly uninspired on the gameplay front, it offers simple stealth and action gameplay that fails to spark much interest. It’s also quite glitchy and struggles to keep a frame rate on Xbox Series X.

I really wanted to like Mafia: The Old Country more than I did, and would still recommend it to people who love story-focused games. Just understand it’s yet another flawed entry in this 23-year-old franchise.

Mafia: The Old Country

Released

August 8, 2025

Developer(s)

Hangar 13

Publisher(s)

2K

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

Franchise

Mafia

Steam Deck Compatibility

Unknown

PC Release Date

August 8, 2025

Uncover the origins of organized crime in Mafia: The Old Country, a gritty mob story set in the brutal underworld of 1900s Sicily. Fight to survive as Enzo Favara and prove your worth to the Cosa Nostra in this immersive third-person action-adventure set during a dangerous, unforgiving era.

This thrilling narrative is brought to life by stunning visuals, cinematic storytelling, and the authentic realism that the critically acclaimed Mafia series is known for. Enzo’s story unfolds in a time when skill with a stiletto blade was a deadly asset, a lupara sawed-off shotgun was a go-to firearm, murderous vendettas raged for decades, and mafiosi patrolled their protection rackets on foot, horseback, or behind the wheel of turn-of-the-century motorcars.

Through grit and determination, Enzo has survived a childhood of indentured labor in Sicily’s hellish sulfur mines. Now, through a twist of fate, he has the opportunity to join Don Torrisi’s crime family, and will do whatever it takes to carve out a better life for himself.

By swearing an oath, Enzo has committed himself to the Torrisi family’s code of honor, with all the power and hardship it entails. He must never forget this simple truth:

Family Takes Sacrifice.

Pros & Cons

• A deeply moving story about organized crime
• Excellent performances from all of its leads
• A well-realized virtual rendition of Sicily

• Lots of unpolished animation
• Performance problems on Xbox Series X
• Derivative shooting and melee combat

Price and Availability

Mafia: The Old Country is available digitally and physically for $50, which prices it similarly to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It’s available across digital storefronts on PC, Xbox Series X, and PS5, following its launch on August 8. A $60 deluxe version of The Old Country is also available digitally, rewarding players with some additional character and car customization options in-game.

One of the best stories in a game this year

A personal, tragic slow-burn

Like the best stories about criminals, The Old Country grapples with the systems that force people into a life of crime and whether one can still be considered a good person in that situation. It’s a slow-burning, nuanced, and personal story that we don’t often get from AAA publishers like 2K.

The game starts with a young Italian man named Enzo, a “carusu” working in sulfur mines in Sicily. He has worked there his entire life after being given up by his father, and finally escapes after an accident kills his friend, and he fights the mafioso foreman. He’s taken in by Don Torissi, and Enzo can start a new life there.

Much of the early game focuses on the mundanity of Enzo’s life, and you empathize with him as he discovers a found family within the Sicilian Mafia and even starts a forbidden love with the Don’s daughter, Isabella. Over time, though, the true nature of this story starts to expose itself.

Enzo escapes the mines and quickly climbs up the ranks of the Mafia, but there’s an uneasy undercurrent to the whole game. Enzo is still trapped once he commits to the mafia, forced to work at the whims of an increasingly irritable Don. He is never truly free to make his own decisions or escape the label of carusu, regardless of his actions or true nature as a person. And Enzo does some pretty extraordinary things throughout The Old Country and has a better moral compass than many of his peers

That struggle is also reflected in Isabella, The Old Country’s other lead. She’s a character who comes from a life of privilege as the Don’s daughter, but is doomed to a life where she’ll never be able to make her own decisions or choose who she wants to marry.

She sees Enzo in a similar situation, and as a potential way out, but what they are gets in the way of who they could be. The Old Country is a tragic tale, and one full of empathy for the poor and generations of Italians who had no choice but to engage with these terrible systems to survive.

Mafia: The Old Country presents a believable world

Although a lack of polish sometimes breaks that reality

The Old Country‘s story resonated with me, largely due to the game’s central performances and setting. The entire cast does a fantastic job, with Riccardo Frascari and Carina Conti bringing nuance and empathy to Enzo and Isabella, respectively. It’s technically an open-world game, although its structure is quite linear, and there’s rarely time to explore it uninterrupted. Despite that, its take on Sicily in the early 1900s is detailed and authentic.

Past Mafia games have taken place in pastiches of United States cities like Chicago and New York City, but The Old Country puts in the effort to craft a believable and realistic-feeling interpretation of Sicily. By the end of the game, I felt innately familiar with the Sicilian countryside, recognizing the places where previous missions or conversations took place as I drove past them.

Thanks to the efforts of the game’s story and world design, I found myself getting quite immersed in The Old Country. Unfortunately, the game’s presentation sometimes felt desperate to break me out of that trance due to its inconsistency.

While the characters and world are well-realized, many character animations appear jagged and unnatural. Asset pop-in and frame rate dips are common in The Old Country’s more intensive segments, and I got stuck in the environment quite a few times. There’s nothing more immersion-breaking than moments like that, and it speaks to how The Old Country struggles when it’s trying to function like a standard AAA shooter.

A master of none at gameplay

Some of the most derivative stealth and action gameplay I’ve seen

While I liked the narrative, the worst part of this Mafia game is playing it. I appreciate the game’s opening hours, which focus on mundane gameplay where players walk around and pick up objects, rather than engaging in combat or shooting. Once Enzo gets a knife and gun, The Old Country fully embraces being a third-person shooter like its predecessors. The problem is that it doesn’t do it very well. At this point, there are many better third-person shooter games out there.

While I’m not expecting this slow-paced, realistic adventure to play as fast or fluid as something like Marvel Rivals, shooting just feels slow and inaccurate, and most combat encounters overstayed their welcome. The weapons all felt the same, and the shootouts were more like fodder to get to engaging story cutscenes rather than parts of the game I looked forward to.

Occasionally, Enzo will get into a knife fight with an opponent. I never liked how these fights felt to play, and they highlight some of The Old Country‘s roughest-looking animations. There are also bog-standard stealth sections where players instantly fail when caught, which is never enjoyable.

While The Old Country‘s story feels authentic and realistic, the gameplay constantly seems to be at odds with that. Firefights with flocks of enemies that are wildly inaccurate, knife fights where it’s always possible to parry, and throwing a coin to distract guards to pass them almost feels too cartoonish for a story where players are supposed to feel stuck and helpless against the societal systems working against them.

The Old Country feels like it’s going through the motions from a gameplay perspective, just doing what it needs to so it can be considered a prestige single-player action game. I wish the game had made a bolder choice to forgo most of that and take design cues from less gameplay-intensive titles like Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga and Lost Records: Bloom & Rage rather than shooters like Grand Theft Auto and Uncharted.

Should you play Mafia: The Old Country?

Whether you’ll like Mafia: The Old Country comes down to one important question: do you play video games primarily for their stories or their gameplay? If you’re part of the former camp and a fan of classic mafia movies, then there’s a lot to love about The Old Country. It’s a deeply personal and introspective journey that addresses the societal constraints that force people into a life of crime, highlighting the distinction between our inherent nature and our perceived identity.

But for those more concerned with gameplay, The Old Country simply presents a very boilerplate experience with stealth, shooting, melee combat, and open-world gameplay that doesn’t particularly stand out. Throw in some technical issues with the Xbox Series X port, and you have a game that is much more entertaining to watch than it is to play.

Still, the game’s story about social classes, crime, and immigrants is moving and still chillingly relevant to our modern times. While I won’t be looking back that fondly on the experience of playing The Old Country, I know I’ll be thinking about Enzo and Isabella’s journeys for a long time.

Mafia: The Old Country

Released

August 8, 2025

Developer(s)

Hangar 13

Publisher(s)

2K

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

Franchise

Mafia

Steam Deck Compatibility

Unknown

PC Release Date

August 8, 2025

Uncover the origins of organized crime in Mafia: The Old Country, a gritty mob story set in the brutal underworld of 1900s Sicily. Fight to survive as Enzo Favara and prove your worth to the Cosa Nostra in this immersive third-person action-adventure set during a dangerous, unforgiving era.

This thrilling narrative is brought to life by stunning visuals, cinematic storytelling, and the authentic realism that the critically acclaimed Mafia series is known for. Enzo’s story unfolds in a time when skill with a stiletto blade was a deadly asset, a lupara sawed-off shotgun was a go-to firearm, murderous vendettas raged for decades, and mafiosi patrolled their protection rackets on foot, horseback, or behind the wheel of turn-of-the-century motorcars.

Through grit and determination, Enzo has survived a childhood of indentured labor in Sicily’s hellish sulfur mines. Now, through a twist of fate, he has the opportunity to join Don Torrisi’s crime family, and will do whatever it takes to carve out a better life for himself.

By swearing an oath, Enzo has committed himself to the Torrisi family’s code of honor, with all the power and hardship it entails. He must never forget this simple truth:

Family Takes Sacrifice.