u/_Varonova

This is so repetitive. The core gimmick is basically driving, infiltrating a racket, having a massive shootout (where the difficulty can be quite unforgiving), either kill or interrogate a main bad guy, and then you turn over the terrorist to somebody else who does basically absolutely nothing with it. It’s not even a reused mission structure, it’s almost the entire game. Early on, it feels like it has a purpose, but I’m a few hours in at this point and it’s just not really building upon it in any impactful ways. It’s just variations of the same task over and over again in order to unlock the story and some side missions. The side missions do have more variety, but I don’t understand why an open world crime game required a grind just to even unlock them. I do think the “Drive Like a Madman” mechanic was creative, though

I should also point out that, while Mafia 1 and 2 never had particularly good gunplay, all the issues with the gameplay loop in those games feels extra amplified in 3. The waves of enemies are MUCH larger and the enemy placement is downright harsh. 3 does add a handful of features to counter this, but it never feels truly satisfying either. The guns feel like playing with toys. I can make peace with it in 2 and DE, but the placement in 3 is just really quite bad

The story is… a mixed bag. It’s objectively really well written, and I feel more attached to Lincoln Clay than I thought I would be. But I’m not a fan of how most of the interesting stuff is behind a cutscene. The game objectively has amazing presentation, but anything that truly matters is basically just a glorified loading screen explaining Lincoln’s life and story before tossing you back into his less-interesting current ventures