Mafia: The Old Country Review: Sicily Sells The Story
Writing a Mafia: The Old Country review after two decades with this series means putting my bias on the table first. I have been with these games since the 2002 original, so a prequel set in early 1900s Sicily was always getting my money. Hangar 13 and 2K released it on 8 August 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. It was one of the most anticipated games of 2025.
Enzo Favara starts as forced labor in a sulfur mine and works his way into the Torrisi family as a soldato. The Mafia: The Old Country gameplay is the part that decides whether you finish that arc happy or restless.
Below, you'll find where the campaign earns its place, where the shooting and the map run out of ideas, and who should hold off.
Mafia: The Old Country Review Summary
Enzo Favara's rise through the Torrisi family is the strongest writing this series has produced.
The game is linear by design, with a free-roam map that opens once you clear Chapter 2.
Knife duels are the combat highlight, built on three knife classes and whetstones.
Gunfights lean on cover shooting that feels a console generation old.
The Free Ride update on 20 November 2025 brought Photo Mode, Cinema Siciliano and Classic difficulty.
Man of Honor on 14 August 2026 added two chapters set in Winter 1905 with Ennio Salieri.
Enzo's Rise Is The Real Draw
San Celeste and the Torrisi estate give the writing somewhere to stand. Enzo's climb from the mine into the family runs in chapters, and each one hands him a job that takes something out of him. Don Bernardo Torrisi treats him as useful long before he treats him as blood, and Luca Trapani does the teaching. I believed those relationships well before I believed anything the combat told me.
Isabella Torrisi is the character who stayed with me after the credits. Her scenes with Enzo carry the danger the plot keeps hinting at, since a soldato courting the Don's daughter has one ending. Cesare Massaro, the Don's nephew, rides with Enzo through most of it, and that partnership is the other thread worth following. This cast does more lifting than any Mafia cast since the first game.
Faces and voices push it further than the script alone could. 2K shipped full voice acting in seven languages with Sicilian among them, and I switched over in the first chapter and never went back. A dozen or so hours later my only real complaint about the Mafia: The Old Country story was a middle act that could lose two chapters.
Knife Duels Peak Then Repeat
Blades are the signature system, and early on they are superb. You parry on the audio cue, roll away from the strikes that flash red, and open your man up the moment he overcommits. The three classes change the maths too: Scannaturi can be thrown, Rasolu kill in one hit during active combat, and Stiletto survive the longest between whetstones. I ran a Scannaturi for ranged takedowns and kept a Stiletto for duels.
Trouble arrives once the game starts leaning on duels for its big fights. By the middle of the campaign I had seen the full move set, and later opponents ask for the same handful of inputs at a quicker tempo. Winning stopped feeling like reading an opponent and started feeling like waiting on a cue.
Stealth sits in the same bracket of good and shallow. Instinct picks out enemies through walls, a thrown coin pulls a guard off his patrol, and bodies go into hiding spots so nobody raises an alarm. It all works cleanly and it never asks a second question of you. I cleared the last optional infiltration exactly the way I cleared the first.
Gunfights Are The Weakest Part
Period weapons are a fine idea that the shooting never lives up to. Handguns, rifles and shotguns fire with a weight that suits the period, and enemies absorb more of it than those guns suggest. Cover snapping is stiff, and Enzo commits to animations that cost me hits I saw coming. Every firefight settles into the same rhythm of pop, fire, reload, move up one crate.
Enemy behaviour is the bigger letdown. Men flank on a script, and once you find the angle that script never planned for, a room falls apart in under a minute. Hard difficulty has enemies hitting harder and aiming better, and your own weapons do less damage. Classic difficulty, added later, trims health regeneration and tightens ammunition, which does more for the tension than for the tactics.
None of this wrecks a chapter. The shooting stretches are short and the set pieces around them are strong. The opera house and the horse race are the two sequences I would happily replay. Gunfights are the tissue holding those moments together, and passing is their ceiling.
Sicily Looks Better Than It Plays
The map is the best-looking thing Hangar 13 has built and the least rewarding to live in. Crypts, ruins, vineyards and that opera house are all here, and the light behaves differently in each. Riding a horse between two jobs is a pleasure for the first hour. After that you start noticing how little the world asks of you.
2K has been straight about this, since the official FAQ calls it a linear, narrative-driven game instead of an open world. Free Ride opens once you clear Chapter 2 and offers collectibles, Dinari to spend and vehicles to take out. I found no side stories and almost no reason to stop moving.
Charms are the only upgrade layer I bothered with, clipping onto Enzo's rosary for passive perks, with merchants selling extra slots. My money went on knives and a decent coat, and then I stopped opening the shop. Nothing out there ever changed how I played. The economy is there to give the map a job it never really does.
Free Ride Gave The Map Purpose
Free Ride replaced the old Explore optionin the 20 November 2025 update, and it changed how I feel about that countryside. Races, combat and stealth challenges finally give the roads something to do beyond ferrying you to a marker. I stopped fast travelling around the free-roam map once the challenges showed up. Photo Mode landed in the same patch, alongside a first-person driving camera, a weather sundial and a pile of outfits, knives, guns and cars.
Cinema Siciliano is the piece I never expected to love. It runs everything in black and white with vintage audio and Sicilian dialogue, and the cutscenes suddenly carry themselves like film from the period. I replayed two chapters that way for no reason beyond how good they looked. It is the strongest argument for a second run the game has.
Man of Honor arrived on 14 August 2026 with two chapters set in Sicily in Winter 1905 and Ennio Salieri, years before he left for America, as the hook for anyone who finished the 2002 game. It also drops Free Ride jobs, fresh weapons, horses and stunt jumps into the Valle Dorata countryside. My verdict rests on the base campaign, since that is what most people buy, and support for a linear single-player game went further than I assumed.
Is Mafia: The Old Country Worth Buying Right Now?
Yes, if you want a crime story told properly and you can live with combat from an earlier console generation. This one is for the Mafia faithful and anyone who takes a dozen strong hours over sixty padded ones. I never once opened the map out of obligation. The campaign wastes none of your time, which is rarer than it ought to be.
The game is also finished in the way a single-player release should be. Updates cleaned up companion AI, collision, subtitles and the cinematic ghosting that nagged me on PS5, and a later one sorted players getting stuck on the way from Free Ride back to Story Mode. Outfits, hats and haircuts you earn now carry into a new game, which took the sting out of restarting on Classic difficulty.
Hold off if you need systems to chew on. Anyone hoping for a sandbox or a deep upgrade tree will be disappointed inside one evening. I would wait for a sale before adding Man of Honor, as two chapters go by quickly. Everyone else should buy it and give the Sicilian voice track a chapter.
FAQs About Mafia: The Old Country
Final Words
Hangar 13 nailed the half that cannot be patched in later. The setting, the cast and the pacing of Enzo's rise are the work of a team that knew which game they were making. Everything I marked down is a system a sequel could rebuild.
My hope for whatever comes next is combat that gets the attention the writing did. Duels with more than one answer, enemies who improvise, a countryside full of people who want something from you.
Coming back to this series after the 2002 original, nothing has felt this close to that first playthrough. It will not fight you on difficulty and it will not demand a hundred hours of your life.
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