“Fallout 4 is a good game; it’s just not a good Fallout game.” We’ve all heard that on forums so often it ought to be engraved on the side of a PC tower, so let me turn it inside-out straight away: Mafia 3 is a good game, and (surprise!) it’s a good Mafia game as well. That feels oddly contentious in 2025, now that chatter around Mafia: The Old Country has dredged Lincoln Clay’s name back onto timelines.
I’ve spent a grand total of 100 hours cruising, skulking, and scheming through 1968 New Bordeaux, and while I can recite the blemishes, I’m here to argue that the third entry deserves a prominent seat at the family table.
A Standout Cast
What grabbed me first (and still holds me) is the cast. Every major character is interesting and well-written, and the voice work is exquisite. Lincoln Clay, Father James Ballard, and John Donovan form a triangle of brute force, moral caution, and barely contained CIA lunacy that carries the story through its slowest stretches.
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+ 5Father Ballard is the rare videogame cleric who feels like more than a confessional backdrop; he’s a genuine conscience, interrogating the cost of vengeance without losing empathy for why Lincoln chose revenge. Donovan, by contrast, steals scenes with an unhinged energy that somehow syncs perfectly with his otherwise stodgy 1960s suits.
And yes, the three underbosses are memorable in their own right. You can blame nostalgia, but Vito Scaletta still wins my heart. However, make no mistake – Cassandra and Burke are solid characters in their own right.
Framing the Story
The documentary framing device elevates the entire narrative. The game splices future interviews and old grainy footage into pivotal moments, turning each mission into documentary evidence, with even your deaths and failures being noted. It’s immersive in the way a Ken Burns film can be: the player isn’t just living a revenge tale but also watching historians, priests, feds, and even the United States Senate – try to understand it all in hindsight.
click to enlarge + 5That structure even softens the critique that Mafia 3 can become repetitive. Sure, the loop boils down to killing, interrogation, and hostile takeovers, yet each district’s little interview nuggets and cutscenes re-contextualize the violence so it feels like deliberate, surgical empire dismantling rather than checklist fatigue.
Guns, Driving, and Combat Feel
Speaking of violence, Lincoln is pure joy to play as. In stealth, he’s brutal and efficient, a psywar-trained ghost with a trench knife that snaps between ribs before the victim can gasp. Out in the open, he moves with a fluidity few third-person shooters manage. I feel the kick of the full-auto M14, the point-shooting snap of the M1911, and I still grin at the goofy coolness of Clay tossing grenades without even looking.
75% of my playthrough leaned on the Thompson submachine gun because, frankly, nothing says “proper Mafia” like 50 rounds of .45ACP. Even driving feels handcrafted. The muscle cars fishtail just enough to make a tight corner thrilling, and the soundtrack playing on their tinny radios completes the fantasy.
click to enlarge + 5Music That Defines the Moment
Ah, that soundtrack. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, The Rolling Stones... every needle drop and radio station is perfection. The prologue’s use of the Rolling Stones' “Paint It Black” remains one of the all-time great needle-drop moments in gaming. I won’t spoil it, but I promise it’s up there with, if not better than, the original COD: Black Ops’ “Sympathy for the Devil” set piece.
Technical Hiccups and Addressing Criticism
Of course, criticisms exist, and many are fair. The launch version was riddled with bugs, frame-rate dips, and hilariously nuclear sunsets that turned dusk into what being an MK-Ultra test subject must’ve felt like. Even patched, enemy AI sometimes forgets to flank, and the world can feel sparse when it is inevitably compared to GTA.
I believe the difference is intent: New Bordeaux is built for atmosphere, not for activities and minigames. Its bayous hum with cicadas instead of side-quests, and its segregated suburbs drive home the ugly realities of 1960s America through actual game systems. Police respond faster in affluent white neighborhoods, drag their heels in poorer black districts, and the game warns you up front that the language used hasn’t been scrubbed for comfort. Authenticity outranks polish here, both for better and for worse.
click to enlarge + 5Repetition is another genuine gripe. If you sprint through story beats, the mission design can blur into a cycle of “destroy the crates, interrogate the lieutenant, and so on.” Spend time soaking in the radio news bulletins, the barroom conversations, and the shifting loyalties of your three underbosses, and the sameness starts to feel thematic as Lincoln dismantles Sal Marcano’s empire brick by ugly brick. Still, I cannot lie to you – it’s an exhausting grind that bogs the game down.
When Intangibles Matter
I’m not blind to these faults; I’m merely biased toward the intangibles, which is what my friends might dismiss as “a vibe thing.” The moment when Sam & Dave’s “Hold On I'm Coming” plays as I drive away from a shootout at a warehouse, blood still wet on Lincoln’s cuffs, lands so hard. That sort of resonance can’t be quantified in any meaningful way, but it lingers in my memory longer than a technical breakdown ever will.
So why mount a defense now? Because The Old Country appears ready to steer Mafia back to a linear, more traditional structure, and while I really respect that, I fear that people will remember Mafia 3 only by its technical faults. This risks erasing how boldly Hangar 13 expanded the series’ thematic reach.
click to enlarge + 5By casting a black Vietnam veteran as its lead and setting him loose in the Jim Crow South, the game acknowledged American racism head-on while still delivering pulpy and violent thrills. It proved the franchise could examine the American dream from a vantage point outside the immigrant perspective of the first two entries.
That’s why I’ll keep defending Mafia 3. Not out of pity, but as a legitimately strong Mafia tale that swung for the fences and connected more than critics admit. Flaws acknowledged, vibe immortalized, it’s earned its place in the family.
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