I bought the expansion the moment Mafia: The Old Country ended, the base game is that good!
I almost never buy DLC as soon as I finish a game. By the time the credits roll, I'm usually ready to play something else. With Mafia: The Old Country, I went straight from the ending to buying Man of Honor because I wanted another evening with Enzo and the boys. I already knew how things turned out for them. I just wanted to hear them talk shit in the car on the way to one more job. That's how much I loved this game. It's my favorite Mafia by a pretty comfortable margin.
Enzo Favara starts out in a sulfur mine in early 1900s Sicily. His father sold him as a boy to settle a debt, and the mine is where he pays for it. After an incident costs him a close friend, Enzo pulls a knife on the man in charge, cuts his face and runs. He makes it as far as a barn belonging to Don Torrisi, who intervenes when the men from the mine come looking for him. Enzo gets a place to sleep and a job shoveling shit. At that point, both feel like a hell of an upgrade.
The Torrisi family
Watching Enzo go from stable boy to someone Torrisi trusts with sensitive jobs is half the pleasure. The other half is watching him figure out what that trust costs. I liked the easy familiarity he develops with Cesare and the way Luca can make a job sound like a lesson. Torrisi can be generous enough that you understand why Enzo wants his approval. Then there's Isabella, the Don's daughter, whose relationship with Enzo gives him something to look forward to and one very good reason to worry about being seen.
It's got the double crosses, the vendettas and the people who mistake being useful for being safe. I could see some of the trouble coming and still found myself hoping Enzo would get out of its way. The campaign moves quickly enough that a favor in one scene can become a problem in the next, but it makes time for the conversations that give those turns some bite. I loved the English voice performances, especially the way an Italian word slips into a line when someone's teasing or losing their patience. The accents have a little theatricality to them, and it suits the material. I especially liked hearing Enzo with the crew away from Torrisi. There's a looseness to those exchanges that disappears when the Don is in the room. The same men who can give each other a hard time on the road know exactly how to talk when somebody higher up is listening. You pick up on the rules of the family just by hearing who gets to make a joke.
A good reason to draw a knife
There's a lot of familiar cover shooting here, and I was always happy to get into another gunfight. The guns have a terrific crack, and landing a shot after leaning out from behind cover feels good. Stealth is straightforward too. You can creep up and take someone down or drive a knife into their neck, with blade durability giving you a reason to think twice before stabbing every guard you pass. I like that a mission can spend a few minutes letting me work quietly before giving me a good excuse to make a mess.
The knife duels were my favorite fights. They play like boss encounters, where there's time to read the other person and look for an opening, and I enjoyed getting the timing down. What I remember most is the moment before the first swing. By the time both men have drawn their blades, you usually know what they have against each other. The little cinematic beats mid-fight keep that grievance alive when you're busy trying to stay on your feet. By then, I wanted to see who'd back down and what it would take to make them.
Hangar 13 gets a lot of mileage out of changing what you're doing within a mission. One minute I was crouching in a piazza, trying to cross it without giving a sniper a clean shot. Then I was up on the rooftops chasing him through town. I also loved how far the finale goes once the volcano starts erupting. The game earns a bit of excess by that point, and I'd leave the rest of that sequence to discover with a controller in your hands.
Sicily from the saddle and the driver's seat
The horses and old cars made even routine trips enjoyable. Riding along a dirt road past the vineyards gave me some of the same pleasure as traveling between jobs in Red Dead Redemption. Then I'd get behind the wheel and enjoy the work of getting an early motorcar around a corner. The countryside looks lovely in motion, especially where the light cuts through the trees. It also makes a nice contrast with that opening stretch underground. I could feel why Enzo wanted to see more of the place as soon as he was out in it.
The cutscenes are even better. The faces are expressive enough that a character can take a second to decide how much of a reaction to show, and the camera knows when to stay on them. You could stitch the scenes together and get a pretty damn good mob movie out of it. On my PS5, the frame rate held up for most of the campaign, but it dipped often enough for me to notice in Performance mode, particularly driving through San Celeste. A stretch of road could go from feeling great to visibly choppy in the space of a turn.
One more job with Salieri
Man of Honor took me about two hours. Its two chapters slot into Enzo's early days as a Torrisi soldier and pair him with a younger Ennio Salieri, who's got some old scores to settle. The highlight is sneaking into a Masonic lodge during a poker night to steal the pot. I like the scale of that job. After the main campaign's finale, there was something funny about going back to Enzo and the boys talking their way through a plan to take a room full of men's money. Their banter alone made me glad I'd gone back.
Free Ride gave me a reason to drive around Sicily after the story, with jobs and challenges to pick up when I felt like it. I'm glad it's there, even if it felt like an afterthought next to how deliberately the campaign puts its missions together. I had more fun doing one job with Salieri and listening to the crew than I did looking for another challenge. It's the company I missed when the story was over. Even when I was enjoying the drive, I'd find myself thinking about the last conversation I'd heard on that road.
I can live with a few rough drives through San Celeste for a Mafia game that gets this much right. I came away remembering the look on someone's face before a knife came out, the sound of the cars on those dirt roads and how quickly Enzo went from being grateful for a bed to having a whole life he could lose. If you're here for a good mob story, this is the Mafia I'd put in your hands first. U capisti? Thanks for reading!
