With my time on the game finished and 100% of the base game achieved, I can say that while my opinion of the title per se is positive, the disastrous port is enough to bring the whole value of the game down as if you can't enjoy it well, you can't enjoy it.

The story, while not reaching the heights of other games in the Mafia series, is really well written. I enjoyed the historical point of view and level of detail in showcasing a 1968 post-Jim Crow era, right during the Civil Rights movement. The way the game's world showcases this era of perpetuated systemic racism and inequality, laying the groundwork for the civil rights struggles that would later follow is nothing short of gamified education, not unlike the early Assasin's Creeds trying to fit their narratives to real history.
Then again, this is nothing new, as Mafia has always excelled at this.
From the radio discussion topics and tracks to the lingo and period cars, these games have always teleported their players into the past, and so has the latest installment.

The open world, while not new to the series, suffers from a lack of variety in its activities. Collectibles are most of the contents, with new additions on top of the staples of the series like the Playboy magazines collectibles, and side missions which are just busywork fetch quests. Another great note about the game is how immersive the world is.

That said, the PC version comes with a LOT of problems that have never been fixed. The title performs very poorly, especially considering the year it came out and the quality of the graphics themselves. The game looks extra blurry because of the TAA implementation, so much so that setting it at low makes the game look its best. Sadly, even when set to low, on restart it will return to high again, so you must change it each time you boot the game. For a relatively new game weighing so much on a disk, considering the quality of textures even at max, it indicates that on top of being poorly optimized the game is also poorly compressed.
The rain VFX, where normally it would reach the ground and splash, does so in the sky on the skybox. Lastly, the enemy AI while not the worst sometimes goes crazy and just starts driving in circles, or won't hide behind corners, etc.

The worst offenders to me are the DLCs, which I would love to talk about, especially after buying them years after. As expected, though, the side quest bug from the original game affects these as well, having the NPCs that start the DLC inside the geometry of the game, and, being unable to interact with them to start, I'm unable to play the DLCs.
Love that for me.

It's been years since this game even released a patch or fixed issues, and they had the audacity to rename it to Definitive Edition, although nothing changed and no patch came out for it except a small update for the crappy launcher.
At the time of writing, this was my hardware when playing the game. I'm including it as a reference point to get an idea of how the game might run on your machine.

CPU: AMD FX-8350
GPU: Nvidia GTX 970
RAM: 8GB
Running on an SSD.
It ran at 1080p 40fps, 60 only when in really empty areas.

5/10

Incredibly shocking to see this game got such low reviews, but I guess I can't argue against this games dissenters too soundly, because their criticisms are correct. This game has a bad case of the open world sickness that was incredibly prevalent at the time of its release. Assassins Creed 2 convinced all these game companies that your game needed a drastic amount of bloat and repetition in order to retain your player base. Mafia 3 will have you repeating the same 3 or 4 missions ad nauseum, albeit with some unique story missions sprinkled in ever hour and a half or so, depending on your overall thoroughness. You'll repeat the same stealth takedowns, shoot the same guns at the same looking goons, and drive pretty much the same cars back and forth picking the world dry of any meaningless collectables you come across. If you look at the game from that standpoint, the game holds up very poorly. But personally, I became fully obsessed with the story on offer. Admittedly, there were some side plots that didn't exactly pan out to my liking, especially taking the DLC into consideration, but man, the story of Lincoln Clay hooked me. I am a sucker for the 'Man is Too Angry to Die' trope, and this game is that in spades. You can feel Lincoln's rage in each of his needlessly brutal stealth kills, his brutal takedowns, the way gameplay revolves around quick and hectic gunfights. Lincoln turns backwater Louisiana into a personal Vietnam for his opponents with his guerilla hit-and-run tactics, and the horror of the situations is amplified by the chatter of your enemies and the detail put into the animations of bloody, dying enemy NPCs. The sound design is also on point, nearly all of the weapons delivering adrenaline pumping audio, and the cars roaring in a way that encourages quick and agile maneuvering. The story absolutely gamifies the best qualities of the blacksplotation genre and puts a really interesting character study on display. The game certainly isn't for everyone, I can't imagine many people want to play another one of these open world collectathons after nearly a decade of being force fed this bloat, but I think if you can wiggle past a little repetition and ignore a lot of the needless bloat (collectables, rackets, a few underwhelming side missions) you'll find a really exciting revenge story.

Mafia III had quite the negative backlash when it was launched.
At first, i couldn't get into it, i dropped it for a year and then came back and got the platinum.
I personally think its a good game, it has many flaws but also many positive things.
It has a solid revenge story with Licoln Clay as a protagonist, he is a great protagonist, the side characters are also good especially Vito.
I liked the theme and vibes of the New Bordeaux/New Orleans of the 60s-70s, the gameplay while repetitive after a certain point, its smooth and it just works really well, the shooting was good and even tho its not a stealth game, its really tempting to go all stealth sometimes. The district distribution system was also cool, you had to think about who to assign as the owner of the district and contemplate about the pros/cons of doing so.
I liked the dlcs, they sure added some value to the game.
The not so good part of the game is its repetitive nature, and for how long it drags like that.
The platinum was laborious, finishing the game 3 times took some time, and it was boring to say the least. Some trophies are glitched, i was lucky to not have any glitch on me (besides one trophy from the dlc, hence why i have the game on 99%😭)
All in all, this game has good substance and its definitely overhated.

-Edit: Damn i forgot how great the soundtrack is! Over 100 songs and not a single one that's bad. I gotta give this game an extra 0.5☆ just for the soundtrack alone.

"Family isn't who you're born with, it's who you die for"

Mafia III é um shooter mudo aberto que se passa em 1968 na cidade fictícia de New Bordeaux e o jogador vive na pele de Lincoln Clay, um ex guerrilheiro da Guerra do Vietnã, que ao voltar para casa e para ajudar sua família adotiva faz um trabalho para a máfia italiana, mandada por Sal Marcano, que visando o máximo lucro trai Lincoln matando os membros de sua família, durante a ataque Clay leva um tiro de raspão na cabeça e não morre por pouco e isso o leva ao coma. Quando ele acorda vai atrás de vingança com ajuda de Donovan (amigo que Lincoln fez durante a guerra e membro da CIA), Cassandra (chefe da máfia haitiana que visa derrubar Sal), Burke (um Irlandes que teve o filho morto por Marcano após ele ajudar a família de Lincoln no trabalho da máfia italiana) e Vito Scaletta (que após ser retirado de Empire Bay vai para New Bordeaux, mas Marcano não gosta da presença dele e tenta matá-lo). O jogo tem uma narrativa passado presente bem interessante, sendo o passado a gameplay na pele de Lincoln e o presente algumas cutscenes de personagens falando sobre seus atos, como se tivessem em um documentário. Durante o gameplay o jogador deve tomar todas as áreas da cidade e cada áreas tem dois minibosses que levaram para um boss e assim é feito até chegar no Sal Marcano, na minha opinião isso fez o jogo ficar muito repetitivo e bem maçante, principalmente tendo em vista que as missões são sempre as mesmas, adaptando apenas alguns detalhes para fazer sentido de acordo com o esquema do Marcano que você está tentando derrubar. O jogo tem uma IA ridícula fazendo pessoas se jogarem em direção a rua só porque você está em auto velocidade perto do passeio, quando você vai passar um cruzamento o npc joga o carro no meio e para, durante as gunfights que os inimigos rushão em você e quando um dos caras é um sentinela (membro da gangue que pede reforços) ele simplesmente vira as costas e sai correndo, mas o mais bizarro é quando o player está sendo perseguido e levando tiro e passa do lado da polícia, os policiais vão simplesmente atrás do jogador e ligam o fodase para os cara que estão atirando, isso me deu uma dor de cabeça na missão de Satangelo. O jogo tem gráficos bem legalzinho mas bugão o tempo todo, perdendo texturas, fazendo o jogo ficar todo brilhante ou todo preto por alguns segundos, o que atrapalha. A ambientação é bem feita e os coletáveis fazem sentido com a época do jogo, porém tem apenas três rádios com pouquíssimas músicas, além dos bugs visuais e os carros aparecendo do nada e bugando no chão que atrapalham a ambientação e a imersão durante a gameplay. No geral é um jogo com boa narrativa e história, mas tem a gameplay atrapalhada por bugs e pela burrice dos NPC’s.