Mafia has been marketed as a Grand Theft Auto competitor since 2002 and has never actually been one. It uses the same furniture — a drivable open city, cars, guns, organised crime — but the design goals are close to opposite.
The fundamental difference
Grand Theft Auto builds a world and then puts a story in it. Mafia builds a story and then puts a world around it. In GTA you can ignore the campaign for twenty hours. In Mafia, the city is largely scenery between missions — there are things to do, but the series has never pretended the sandbox is the point.
That has consequences. Mafia's missions are tightly authored set pieces with a level of narrative control Rockstar rarely attempts. It also means that if you finish a Mafia mission and go looking for something to do, you will usually find less than you expected.
Which entries to buy
| Entry | Verdict | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mafia: Definitive Edition | BUY | A ground-up remake of the 2002 original with modern controls and presentation. The best entry point by a distance |
| Mafia II | BUY | 1940s–50s Empire Bay. The most beloved entry for many fans, with an exceptional soundtrack. The open world is thin; the story is not |
| Mafia III | DEPENDS | 1968 New Bordeaux is one of the best settings the genre has produced and the writing is genuinely strong. The mission structure is repetitive to a degree that puts a lot of people off |
| Mafia: The Old Country | DEPENDS | The 2025 Sicilian prequel. A more focused, smaller-scale game than the marketing suggested — buy it for the story and setting, not for open-world scope |
Our full ordering guide is in the Mafia series buying guide.
Who each series is for
What works
- Mafia if you want a gangster film you play — tight, authored, character-driven, finishable in a couple of weekends
- Period settings GTA has never touched: 1930s, 1940s, 1960s, 1900s Sicily
- Missions with real dramatic structure rather than sandbox improvisation
- Substantially cheaper than a new release, and short enough to fit before November
What doesn't
- GTA if you want a world that reacts to you and gives you room to improvise
- Mafia's cities are noticeably empty once the mission ends
- Mafia III's repetition is a genuine, widely reported problem
- None of the Mafia games approach GTA 6's systemic depth
What GTA 6 changes about this comparison
Interestingly, not nothing. GTA 6's chapter-based structure, roughly 80-hour story-focused run and persistent Criminal Profile all point toward a more authored, more consequence-driven game than GTA 5 was. That narrows the gap slightly.
It does not close it. GTA 6 is still a game where you can spend an afternoon doing nothing the story asked for, in a map stated to be three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's. Mafia has never wanted to be that game and is better for knowing it.
As pre-GTA 6 filler
Mafia is well suited to the run-up specifically because the games are short. Mafia: Definitive Edition or Mafia II can be finished in a couple of weeks of evenings, which is the right shape for the eleven weeks before launch. An eighty-hour open world is not. That logic is the backbone of short games you can finish before GTA 6.