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Mafia: The Old Country - PC/PS5/XB

Unfortunately made by the same developers who made the god awful Mafia Remake from 2020, so although slightly excited, I know I will be disappointed again.
 
Played back in the day Mafia: City of Lost Heaven when was released in 2002 finishing it at least 3 times, then 8 years later Mafia 2 was also great. During 2020 onwards I enjoyed a lot the Mafia 1 Remake and Mafia 2 DE, to the point that I was sucked in that world and was invested to experience doing all the additional side content. I never played Mafia 3 even though I have it in my library, the GTA style wasn't my cup of tea to enjoy some authentic gangster environment.

I'm a lot into this new Mafia The Old Country prologue, like waiting to watch a masterpiece movie or to read a great book. From the footage, the game does intensively better what a mafia game should be: great narrative with strong characters, awesome graphical and vibrant environmental details, very nice interactive cutscenes, solid shooting and driving gameplay. This game is pure art, and I think we should support developers with this classic view on projects. Also the price is nice and even if the main content will be short I think overall will be a great replayable experience. I hope that this game will include some great side content plus unlockables and also to choose or unlock some Italian dialog with english subs (similar like Sekiro with the Japaneese voice). I'm so excited and can't wait play it !!!
 
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Less then 3 hours to the release. Salute! :WASTED:

I watched 3 different german speaking reviews on YT and in some parts every one say different things which are good or not so good.

But every one mean it is a good game and it is more like Mafia 1 than Mafia 3.

In one review they sayed it don't have an savegame option. Just one automatic savegame which every time you save your game it overwrites the last savegame. Sounds not so good for me.

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Every cliché about Italy fulfilled: Check!
 
According to HLTB the main + side quests are between 11 and half and 13 hours long, so I feel the price is mostly generous knowing that additionally you also have a free ride mode where you can collect things that you've missed so you can double the playtime. Taking advantage of purchasing a beast of PC my first game on it is this, playing until now through the first four chapters... and damn with everything on max settings this game is gorgeous. That mediterranean scenery reminds me in some way of Witcher 3 Blood & Wine expansion. Very focused on the story and very intensive interaction wise, organically transitioning directly from cutscenes to gameplay. The soundtrack is awesome, like I've anticipated characters have weight performing great with strong acting, and the overall atmosphere is recreated as it should be from that period in Sicily (I've even changed the voice option from English to Sicialian for the atmosphere to be as authentic as posible).

It's a marvelous game, and I hope the gaming industry will have more of those gems on its sleeves. Id rather prefer a game like this to get immersed for 13 hours, than playing some 100 hours ubisoft lame game where the writing and characters are ass, combined with copy/pasta dumb boring nonsensical activities...
 
Unfortunately made by the same developers who made the god awful Mafia Remake from 2020, so although slightly excited, I know I will be disappointed again.
I watched a guy playing it, really not a fan and I'm the biggest Mafia fan you'll see. This doesn't have the magic of the original Mafia 1 and 2. It's all dumbed down mechanics to allow EVERYONE to play it and no skill needed at all, no originality, doesn't even seem like the Mafia games of old, more like Hitman or 1000 other games. It's all hand-holding and spoon-fed slop. WTF is that instincts thing? That's not Mafia. That's some Hitman reduce the difficulty and tension of any stealth situation to zero nonsense. What have they done to my boy?

I'll watch some more, hopefully it improves and adds more interesting elements and some actual gameplay. In fairness the graphics, setting, acting and dialogue are molto bene.
 
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I watched a guy playing it, really not a fan and I'm the biggest Mafia fan you'll see. This doesn't have the magic of the original Mafia 1 and 2. It's all dumbed down mechanics to allow EVERYONE to play it and no skill needed at all, no originality, doesn't even seem like the Mafia games of old, more like Hitman or 1000 other games. It's all hand-holding and spoon-fed slop. WTF is that instincts thing? That's not Mafia. That's some Hitman reduce the difficulty and tension of any stealth situation to zero nonsense. What have they done to my boy?

I'll watch some more, hopefully it improves and adds more interesting elements and some actual gameplay. In fairness the graphics, setting, acting and dialogue are molto bene.
I think Mafia 2 is a god game. The story is just everything. However, I also found Mafia 3 to be a very good game that I enjoyed, even though the main character is unusual.

What do you think of Mafia 3? Is Mafia 3 better or The Old Country?
 
Unfortunately made by the same developers who made the god awful Mafia Remake from 2020, so although slightly excited, I know I will be disappointed again.
I really hated the changes to some of the cutscenes made in the remake. Not every change was bad but some of the changes they made really ruined the game for me.
 
I watched a guy playing it, really not a fan and I'm the biggest Mafia fan you'll see. This doesn't have the magic of the original Mafia 1 and 2. It's all dumbed down mechanics to allow EVERYONE to play it and no skill needed at all, no originality, doesn't even seem like the Mafia games of old, more like Hitman or 1000 other games. It's all hand-holding and spoon-fed slop. WTF is that instincts thing? That's not Mafia. That's some Hitman reduce the difficulty and tension of any stealth situation to zero nonsense. What have they done to my boy?

I'll watch some more, hopefully it improves and adds more interesting elements and some actual gameplay. In fairness the graphics, setting, acting and dialogue are molto bene.

The enemy AI seems to be so dumb in the stealth segments. So it doesn't even make sense to have that instinct thing. Because it further makes the difficulty too easy. A huge chunk of the game is filled with boring stuff.

However, I think it's an net improvement over Mafia 3 because of how repetitive mafia 3's missions were after the initial 1-2 hours. The repetitive grind to do same open world tasks in mafia 3 just to progress to next boss [where the mission structures were actually good and enjoyable] made me uninstall the game. Unnecessary padding ultimately turned that game into a tedious chore.

So in comparison to that, this one seems better.
 
I think Mafia 2 is a god game. The story is just everything. However, I also found Mafia 3 to be a very good game that I enjoyed, even though the main character is unusual.

What do you think of Mafia 3? Is Mafia 3 better or The Old Country?
I never even tried 3, purely cos I read so much negativity.

I did complete the 2020 Mafia remake. I thought it was a beautiful world, few good things, but overall suffers from the same thing as many modern remakes, or even modern games in-general. All nice graphics with nothing else at all to make them superior to a 20+ year old game. Developers have all these new powerful systems, tools, big budgets, advanced AI etc at their disposal, yet what exactly do they do with it all? All seems like regression to me, no innovation, they hardly seem to be pushing things to their limits do they?. Instead just a paint job, copy key ideas from a previous game in the genre, slap on a minimap, add indicators so the user knows exactly what to do and how to do it at every moment and call it a day.
 
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I understand you. Currently, it seems that the only focus is on improving the graphics; the gameplay mechanics and missions are all very similar.
Mafia 3 had a bad reputation at first because it was technically very poor. However, I played it with all the updates.
I played the original Mafia 1 a few years ago, and it's almost unplayable due to the outdated technology. The remake is playable, but I remember being a little disappointed.

I'm going to buy The Old Country. But with 10 hours of gameplay, I'll never pay full price for it. It doesn't have to be 50 hours, but 10 hours is only 3-4 evenings of gaming.
 
I played the original Mafia 1 a few years ago, and it's almost unplayable due to the outdated technology.
Try Mafia Alive Bars Mod.
Visual technology may be, certainly, outdated, but script possibilites, made by talented modders almost "has no borders".
Also exist plenty of global mods, that make visual view of game much more perfect and pleasant for eyes.
 
Thank you for your suggestion. I will likely never play Mafia 1 again. I still have enough games and would prefer to play Mafia 2 or 3 again.
 
So far I am about 3 hours into the game.
First impressions are it is alright but haven't done much fighting yet.

Typical game from last 10 years - Stealth elements aren't stealthy you can go in with a marching band and stand right behind people for 5 minutes and they won't know you are there, but is no way Indiana Jones bad.
So far the story is a complete copy and paste of the 1st Mafia game - Except replace car race with horse race and move it to the country side.

The knife fighting is pretty good and a new element although extremely easy after 2 minutes of getting used to it.

I will see how the story develops and hopefully it moves away from just ripping off the original Mafia game.
 
I'm going to buy The Old Country. But with 10 hours of gameplay, I'll never pay full price for it. It doesn't have to be 50 hours, but 10 hours is only 3-4 evenings of gaming.

It's not really 10 hours of gameplay. A huge chunk of that time will be spent on walking, carrying boxes or something and unstimulating things like that.
 
I'm on the last four chapters right now. So far, from an interactive and story driven perspective this game feels very good, especially knowing the fact that cutscenes and gameplay parts are organically combined. As a plus, the soundtrack, dialogs and especially graphics are awesome (in this regard everything feels like an work of art), combined overall with a clean and polished UI. Gameplay wise, if people are expecting some expansive gameplay to be compared with GTA, open paths or many ways to interact, or in depth stealth mechanics, then this particular game will not be their coup of tea. Like I mentioned previously, Mafia The Old Country is very story driven, developed in mind to be played like as you're experiencing a movie regarding how was Mafia on Sicilia back then, involving interactive parts and gameplay mechanics in it. Mafia 1 was a great classic with a more flexible approach on playing through missions that also included photorealistic models and graphics (I think that was one main point that made it awesome and unique). Mafia II was very good, but was also focused on other parts expanding more on new things, in the end generating a lesser focus on the main story. Mafia III feels like some unpolished GTA, loosing all its heritage in the process and could be named differently without any remorse. What I like about Mafia Remake and Mafia The Old Country is the fact that they're back to their roots story wise in the development process, and eventually we could see a new Mafia title back in the early days in America, that could involve new characters and story...

EDIT: a few screenshots, from just a part of the game...


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Completed the game now.

The story is what holds the game together.
Although it does feel rushed and they could of easily added some more details to the story and fleshed it out more.
It definitely could of had another 10 hours to game with fleshing out the story at certain points - The game feels very rushed in the 2nd half.
The story in general is decent and what keeps you immersed in the game.

Gameplay:-
There is nothing wrong with the gameplay or anything that is done perfectly.
The stealth elements are on par with most modern games where guys stand in a convenient location for you to easily take them out.
Stealth games just aren't very stealthy anymore and Indiana Jones set an absolute new low bar.

The gun fights are the most fun part, probably even more so on PC due to headshots. (Don't forget to turn off auto aim in the settings on PC as this is on by default.)
The AI is pretty dump it will just walk at you shooting and will hide in front of crates for an easy shot (but this is very rare)
The pump action shotgun is way too overpowered - Everyone is just a one shot kill.

Car driving is pretty much what to expect, it isn't the really slow and clunky (realistic) Mafia 1 method but the remastered version where the cars handle like you got the speed and grip of an F1 car.

The element I hate most about the game though is the catch up and pull away logic - If you crash your car you just magically catch up and the game always dictates that you are 50-80m away from your target until the next cutscene or sequence is needed.
This is most noticeable during the horse and car races where they are designed for you to not be in first till the final few corners.

Overall though it is actually a decent addition to the Mafia franchise and is probably either the 2nd or 3rd best in the franchise.
I would recommend the game but would probably wait for a few patches due to some issues need ironing out and for the game to be half price.

EDIT:
Steam game time was 13.5 hours.
 
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