I didn’t intend to actually play this… The collectibles were spread through the world intead of specific story missions like in 2. So I thought I could just go and grab them all and be set. Turns out 90% or so can be just grabbed right away, but a few require story progress to access the buildings. One of those story missions being the final one, so I still had to beat the game.

Reason I wanted to avoid this was partially what I’ve heard. Fans of Mafia 2 that I’ve seen generally don’t care for 3 as much. The two are very different games design and story wise. Mafia 2 was a serious take on being in the mafia, the glitz and life ruining stuff just being a part of it. 3 is a roaring rampage where you basically play a terminator out for revenge with the mafia just being both the target and your source of cash. As a game, 3 is better to me. 2 taking your stuff away 2 or 3 times just makes it less fun, though I will admit it had more meat to its story then what 3’s protag has.

Also another real-life softcore thing was another goal I had this year, so here we are. Open world game, I won’t be going into the race stuff, just the game itself.

Story- 3

Lincoln Clay comes back from the Vietnam War to his mafia adopted family in the Hollow. After dealing with some stuff, they all get killed and Lincoln barely survives getting shot in the head. He recovers, calls an agent friend from the war, and decides to get revenge for his father figure. He recruits 3 other gangs to run business for capitol and then systematically destroys the guy who killed his family.

That’s really it. You talk to a few people in town, but really only the army friend agent is given a decent amount of screen time. The 3 gang leaders don’t have much, and anyone below them might as well not be a character. This is the biggest issue with the game’s story, Lincoln doesn’t interact with basically anyone other than his army friend for enough time. It basically is just terminator goes to town on the mafia. There’s some racism stuff, but honestly it only mattered in like 2 or 3 points in the game, mostly sex industry stuff. Most of the rest of the game it could be replaced by sports team the people are fans of and it wouldn’t change anything. The villain is barely around, and his goal is kind of silly. Like he thinks all the grudges will just go away if he goes legitimate by commiting crimes? No way in hell.

Gameplay- 7

Open world, with 3rd person shooting, driving, and racing mechanics. No hacking minigame, though there is a timer based crowbar unlock. Power boxes act as Assassin Creed towers, unveiling pickups and doing a few things for missions in that zone. Compared to Mafia 2, this is a much more standard open world affair.

I split the game into 4 different phases. Phase 1 is the prologue, where no cop cares what you do but you also can’t get money or keep much of anything you find. The only permanent thing you can do during this time is find the collectibles, though that’s easier during phase 2 when you can use the power boxes as they show collectibles on the map.

Phase 2 is the actual tutorial and intro to the game’s mechanics. You have little options or choices here.

Phase 3 is the real open world part of the game. You have 3 options for regions to take that open up another 3, races to compete in, and all of the game’s mechanics are open. This is also where you have to make permanent decisions that tie into the fact you can’t 100% the game without hacking. Phase 4 is just the end of the game with nothing to do but cause mayhem.

You have 3 sub bosses behind you, each giving perks and bonuses to Mr. Main Character. Each represents a different group in the town and it’s up to you if they live or die, stay loyal or betray. Each of the 6 districts in phase 3 can be given to any of the three bosses. Showing favoritism though will lead to betrayal. Each of the regions also have a money worth, and there simply isn’t enough as that money is what unlocks the perks from the sub bosses. Each has 12 perks to unlock, but balancing each of them only gives 10 from each. Best case is 11 from one and 10 from the other two. The only way to hit max from any of them is shaft another one. Thankfully the final perk from them all is unneeded, generally their best unlocks are in their first 10. I picked the gun unlock 11th perk for my save.

How do you unlock those districts to hand out? That’s the bulk of the game. You take two missions sets in each district and go around killing and destroying stuff to unlock the final missions. This is the standard open world gameplay of go to place and kill all hostiles. Repeat 60 times and you beat the game. The final mission of each district is the best content of the game, but most of your time is driving to a spot, headshotting someone, and moving on. There are some races to do as your only real optional content beyond the collectibles.

Only issue with racing is it unlocks when you lack what you need to beat them. Each has a time you need to beat to get a cosmetic unlock, and to move fast enough you need to upgrade your cars. As you take districts you unlock more guns and car upgrades for purchase from your covert merchant you can call up. You get 1-2 free ones from each district based on who you give the area too, the rest need to be bought. This is also where you buy upgrades you’ve unlocked from sub bosses, like imporving healing items or bigger gun magazines.

Biggest complaint with the whole game is the time waster missions. There’s a whole set of delivery missions you need to do twice for each district to get its full value. These are all go deep into the south of the map, find a vehicle and bring it to the mission sites in each district. Two of the sub bosses also have missions that are just vehicle delivery. You spend way too much time driving place to place to get the most value out of things. At least the cops aren’t as crazy as Mafia 2. Speed limit? Who cares. Red Lights? No worry. Long as you don’t hit someone or crash into a cop they don’t care. Which is a way better then Mafia 2.

Also, I had to stand around to earn enough money to finish upgrading stuff. The best sources of money is racing(decent) or just standing around and collecting your sub bosses earned cash every 1 real life hour in game. Robbing stores is worth little. I just wish running around and having fun in the world actually earned you some cash. Enemies drop 20-40 dollars when the cheapest permanent purchases are like 4500. The big ones are ten times that.

Lewdness- 5

Playboy and Vargas paintings, which are fitting for the time period, are scattered around to collect. Vargas is the name of an artist who did airbrush pin up posters. It’s very much just artist renditions of the same stuff Playboy was taking pictures of for their magazines. Topless women in various poses.

The Playboy stuff is split between actual text articles and images. So, you get some of the actual writing of what was once an actual illustrious (or just well paying) magazine to write for, and the actual reason people bought the thing. The images are less nudity focused and a decent number of them are reused from 2, making the pin ups the real meat of the new fanservice.

There’s also a few topless NPCs, I think? Some were in the strip clubs but honestly, I rarely went into an of the world’s business since other than robbing them you can’t do anything in them.

Final Thoughts

A game with too much filler. It’s an open world game in almost a paint by numbers approach of making one. Copy-paste kill missions and driving between a and b just to waste time. Did I ever mention that big game worlds tend to be boring, since the only way to use that space is basically filler content? Doesn’t matter how good the mechanics are if I’m only interacting with them half of my playtime.

Basically, each of the game’s 11 main areas has 1 unique mission. The rest of the game is filler to hit the requirements to go do the actual effort stuff. If it wasn’t for the magazines and pinups, I would have skipped this as its design is the most standard open world game, you could get. Switch the power boxes for Assassin towers and it would fit right in a Ubisoft production.

It’s not terrible, but it feels basic.

Save for Mafia 3 Definitive Edition

Two saves. One at the start of the game with all collectibles gathered that aren’t story locked and another at the end of the game with all collectibles and things bought and done. The kind of save you give a younger sibling to run around and shoot guns and drive around for fun.

I ignored the dlcs, they don’t add any content for my purposes.

Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 3/10

Completion:

I did everything, so races, item gathering, and max character progression. Races were kind of annoying since you basically had to beat best times, but weren’t terrible. Items are basically shown to you on the map and progression as me sitting doing nothing for about 8 hours to collect cash to buy anything I hadn’t. It’s time consuming, not hard.