Mafia: The Old Country (2025) - Review in Depth with PSS

If you have been following news regarding the most anticipated games of 2025, you probably have heard about Mafia: The Old Country, the latest entry in the Mafia series. Developer Hanger 13 first showcased the game almost a year back at Gamescom 2024. As revealed in early trailers, you get to play the character of Enzo Favara in the game, a young Italian who was sold by his father to work in the Sulfur mines of Sicily.

Enzo and his friend Gaetano share one dream: to escape to America. However, things take a turn when Gaetano is killed in a mining incident, and soon after, Enzo gets into a fight with Damiano “Il Merlo” Bastoni of the Spadaro crime family. This forces Enzo to flee the sulfur mines, and he eventually ends up on the territory of Don Bernardo Torrisi, the head of the Torrisi crime family.

Looking back, the Mafia series focuses on the Italian Mafia across different time periods. For context, Mafia 1 is set in the 1930s, Mafia 2 in the 1940s and early 1950s, and Mafia 3 in the late 1970s. Mafia: The Old Country takes the player back to the early days of Mafia, Sicilian Mafia to be exact.

While the previous release, Mafia III: Definitive Edition, received mixed reviews, Mafia: The Old Country hits the mark by staying true to the roots of the series with linear, story-driven gameplay.

Whether it is the engaging story, the car chases, the knife fights, or the horse races, Mafia: The Old Country keeps you hooked from the beginning. Throughout the story, the game focuses on themes of brotherhood, loyalty, love, and even betrayal. However, the game isn't perfect, even if it is engaging enough and offers plenty of fun.

Back to Sicily, Back to Basics

After spending 12 hours to complete the game, three things make Mafia: The Old Country a great game: story, visuals, and gameplay. So, to begin with, let's focus on the game's story.

As mentioned earlier, Mafia: The Old Country is set in Sicily during the 1900s, centered around the fictional "Valle Dorata" region. Following Enzo's arrival in Don Bernardo Torrisi’s territory, Don Torrisi saves Enzo from the Spadaro family members and puts him to work within the Torrisi family. Here, Enzo is introduced to members of the Torrisi family, including Cesare, Luca, Valentina, Isabella, and others.

Guided by Cesare, Enzo begins his first tasks, which include carrying wine bottles, cleaning stables, collecting money owed to the Don, and more. These tasks help Enzo work his way up in the Torrisi family. Additional aspects, including winning horse races, fighting bandits and even rescuing Isabella, further push him upwards. After proving himself, Enzo swears loyalty to the family and becomes part of their criminal world.

Mafia: The Old Country effortlessly handles larger themes of loyalty, brotherhood, love, and betrayal. I really liked Enzo's determination as a character and his constant drive and ambition to build a better life for himself. Beyond this, I also love how the story creates the right amount of tension in the relationship between Enzo and Isabella, Don Torrisi’s daughter.

The narrative constantly pushes Enzo to make tough choices like staying true to his loyalty oath to Don Torrisi or to follow his feelings for Isabella. We also get tragic moments that deeply impact Enzo, such as the death of his mentor, and more. As part of the overall experience of the story, I also liked the quality of the voice acting throughout my playthrough. The primary example of this is the first appearance of Don Torrisi, where his voice carries the power and intimidation that his rivals, including the Spadaros, should feel.

Strong narrative, gripping music including the soundtrack, and engaging gameplay kept me glued to the game. The story's pacing was excellent, with hardly any loose, unnecessary parts, which made me want even more. At the same time, I was surprised to find the lack of side quests, which made the game feel shorter than it should have been. Irrespective, it was fun to play and experience the game.

A Gorgeous Old Country

Moving to the second aspect, the visuals of the Sicilian countryside in the game are stunning, with a detailed environment consisting of San Celeste town.

Hanger 13 has created a rich in-game world around this town with an active volcano, churches, a dockyard, and more. It also includes cars, plenty of NPCs and houses with detailed textures, shadows, and much more.

Overall, the environment gives off Red Dead Redemption-like vibes. All these details and the visual fidelity ensure that the in-game cutscenes stand tall, along with perfectly fitting music. Other game systems, like the procedural blood system, which adds blood spatters during fights, sparks from classic (old) guns when fired, and more, enable consistent immersion.

Stilettos, Stealth, and Shootouts

One word that can describe the gameplay experience of Mafia: The Old Country is fun. This fun comes from many in-game mechanics, including knife fights, parrying, safe cracking with passcodes, breaking door locks, loot boxes, and more. These aspects also include full-on weapons combat, riding horses, going completely stealth to take down your enemies silently, and even dumping bodies. Later in the game, you even drive and race with classic cars. Here are some essential aspects I want to focus on as part of the gameplay experience.

Knives and Guns

During my playthrough, I really liked the addition of knives, which expands the scope of the gameplay. The durability attribute offers something different from most knife-wielding games available in the market. In addition, one of the most satisfying aspects of the knife-play was landing a perfect parry. Finally, speaking about the variety, even though the game offers multiple knife types, most don't provide a significant difference in gameplay beyond the Stiletto knives.

As Hanger 13 execs shared with IGN India in an exclusive interview, most of the in-game firearms were inspired by Italian military service weapons from that era. Considering the target, the developer understood the assignment and successfully brought authenticity to the gun gameplay. I liked how satisfying the sound of guns felt and what appears to be a realistic kickback from the recoil.

While I can't speak to the accuracy of the realism, everything felt detailed enough for the hard work of the developers to shine through. For instance, rifles from that era were not very accurate, which made its way to the actual gameplay as realism and highlighted the attention to detail of Hanger 13. However, to nitpick, the ability to upgrade and modify the attributes and looks of the guns could further enhance this part of the game.

 

Stealth

The first thing you will notice about the stealth mechanic is its similarity to the Hitman games. This includes dumping bodies in stashes, distracting enemies by throwing objects, and more. The game contains dedicated stealth missions where you can fully utilise methods like choking enemies from behind, silent knife kills, and more, providing a proper stealth gameplay experience. As I shared earlier, I liked this because it offered a different gameplay style.

Difficulty Settings

I played the game on the easy level to have a better experience. There are other difficulty options like medium and hard. The higher the difficulty, the less damage your weapon deals, the fewer rewards you will receive from looting enemies, and so on. However, like in other games, a custom difficulty mode could be an interesting addition, allowing players to adjust the level of different difficulty attributes.

Behind the Vintage Wheel

Besides the three aspects outlined earlier, one thing that surprised me was the vehicle handling in Mafia: The Old Country. To describe this, it is excellent, and you can tweak some parts of this experience with charms. But I did not bother equipping them and continued to play the game with the default experience.

Considering the number of classic cars in the game, an in-game garage would enhance this experience. I also feel that improved upgradability of the different attributes of the vehicles would be an interesting tweak, instead of just changing the appearance of these cars.

The Endgame Problem

You can explore the in-game world, collect in-game collectables, buy cars and weapons through the explore mode, but that is about it. After finishing the game, I tried these activities but quickly got bored, as there isn’t much to do. While you can replay the story at different difficulty levels, additional missions or other activities, like side quests, would have made things more engaging and lasting.

While the game is great, there are a lot of small things that stop it from being perfect. Beyond the things I highlighted above, including the length of the game, absence of side quests and things to do after the story wraps up, a few more things impact Mafia: The Old Country. One of the major ones is the absence of a mini-map as an additional accessibility feature, which was available in previous Mafia games.

Sure, the game has in-game signs that point you in the direction you need to go. However, you can easily miss them during gameplay, making navigation tricky. I often found myself heading in the wrong direction during missions and had to open the main map to figure things out constantly. All this is easily solvable with an optional mini-map.

Is Mafia: The Old Country Worth the Price?

The answer to this question is slightly complicated. While the game is fun, and most things are great, especially if you enjoy linear story-driven games (including the first three Mafia games). The shortcomings of the game impact its value.

In India, Mafia: The Old Country is priced at ₹3,799 for the Standard Edition on PS Sales & Service. If you are a fan and can't wait for the game, go ahead, you won't regret it.