Mafia has never been a Grand Theft Auto competitor despite two decades of being marketed as one. It is a series of linear crime dramas that happen to be set in drivable cities, and it is best approached with that expectation firmly in place.
The four games
| Entry | Era | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Mafia: Definitive Edition | 1930s Lost Heaven | BUY — start here. A full ground-up remake of the 2002 original with modern controls, current-gen visuals and the original story intact. Around 12–15 hours |
| Mafia II | 1940s–50s Empire Bay | BUY. The most beloved entry for many. Exceptional period soundtrack and a strong central story. The open world is thin, which some players hold against it |
| Mafia III | 1968 New Bordeaux | DEPENDS. Outstanding setting, music and writing, undermined by a repetitive district-takeover structure that runs far too long |
| Mafia: The Old Country | Early 1900s Sicily | DEPENDS. The 2025 prequel. Tighter and smaller in scope than expected — buy it for the story and setting rather than for open-world scale |
The right order
Play them in the order above, which is roughly chronological by release rather than by in-fiction era. The games are largely self-contained — there are connections and returning characters, but nothing that makes starting with the Definitive Edition confusing.
If you only ever play one, make it Mafia: Definitive Edition. It is the shortest, the most polished, and the purest expression of what the series is: a gangster film with a controller.
What the series does well
What works
- Period settings nobody else touches — 1930s America, the post-war 50s, 1968, 1900s Sicily
- Authored mission design with genuine dramatic structure
- Consistently outstanding soundtracks
- Short. Most entries can be finished across a couple of weeks of evenings
What doesn't
- Open worlds are noticeably empty once the mission ends
- Mafia III's repetition is a real and widely reported problem
- Combat is competent rather than exciting across the whole series
- There is very little reason to keep playing after the credits
Mafia in the run-up to GTA 6
The series is unusually well suited to the eleven weeks before November 19, precisely because the games are short. Mafia: Definitive Edition and Mafia II together are roughly the length of one modern open-world game, and both can be finished rather than abandoned.
That matters more than it sounds. The most common mistake in a pre-launch window is starting something enormous and dropping it mid-story when the big release lands — the problem short games you can actually finish and what not to buy before GTA 6 both address.
For the wider genre picture, see Mafia vs GTA and the open-world crime roundup.