Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor Review

It has been a little over a year since Mafia: The Old Country first launched, and going back into it for Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor feels a bit like visiting an old neighborhood you used to know well. Hangar 13 built its name on the Mafia series long before this entry, and The Old Country itself became one of the standout releases of 2025 thanks to a tight, character-driven story wrapped around turn-of-the-century organized crime.

When it first came out, though, it was clear the game wasn't entirely finished. Free Ride, the open-world exploration mode, launched feeling hollow, and the combat, while serviceable, was never going to be the reason anyone fell in love with the game.

Hangar 13 has spent a year quietly filling in those missing pieces.

A free update later patched some of that emptiness into Free Ride, but it still felt like content that should have shipped on day one. Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor is Hangar 13's first paid DLC for the game, arriving a year after launch, and it finally makes the base game feel like the complete package it always should have been.

You get two new story chapters, plus a meaningful stack of additions to Free Ride, all for ten dollars, which lines up with what Mafia III charged for its own expansions back in the day. In Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor, you pick the story back up as Enzo Favara, only this time you're dropped into the winter of 1905, in a stretch of time sitting between Chapter 5, "Vendetta d'Onore," and Chapter 6 of the main campaign.

You can either weave these two chapters directly into a fresh playthrough of the base game or jump straight into them if you've already cleared Chapter 5. The whole point of Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor is to explore the origin of Ennio Salieri, the character who eventually becomes the feared Don from the very first Mafia game.

Here, though, you're meeting a much younger, scrappier version of him: freshly released from prison after keeping his mouth shut for years about the family's business, and hungry to reclaim what was taken from him while he was locked away.

That grudge is what actually sets the two new chapters in motion.

Don Torrisi calls in Enzo and Cesare to help Salieri settle the score, and the assignment kicks off during a local holiday where the Don is publicly dispensing favors, blessing marriages, and settling debts. Salieri uses the occasion to ask for his own favor, and that request drags you into his personal vendetta.

The story splits neatly into two targets: you go after one man who wronged Salieri, then the other, and the second target introduces a bigger money deal that catches Salieri's attention and effectively becomes the closing act of Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor.

What strikes you as you play through it is that this isn't really about redemption or a clean revenge story. Salieri comes across as selfish, reckless, and quick to let his temper get the better of him, and you can tell almost immediately that Enzo doesn't fully trust him.

Cesare, on the other hand, looks up to Salieri and wants to be like him, which creates a nice bit of friction between the two people you're controlling throughout these missions. Enzo keeps voicing doubts about whether the Don would even approve of what you're doing, and by the end, those doubts turn out to be justified.

That growing distrust between Enzo and Salieri shapes a quieter, more grounded ending.

The ending isn't a huge, dramatic showdown so much as a quieter comeuppance, and while you might expect something a little more explosive going in, you end up appreciating how it ties into where Enzo sits early in his story, still not fully trusted by the family and still doing grunt work like burying bodies on his own.

There's also a short, optional detour involving Isabella, where you read a letter from her and get a little glimpse into their early relationship, which felt like a nice breather from all the scheming. Salieri's history in Sicily as a made man, his plan to eventually get to America, and his tangled relationship with the Torrisi family all feed directly into where the original Mafia's story picks up later.

So if you've played that game, watching this younger, more volatile version of him is genuinely interesting. On the gameplay side, the two new chapters in Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor will take you somewhere between two and three hours to finish, depending on how thorough you are.

That's on top of everything added to Free Ride, which is really where the bulk of the extra playtime comes from if you want it. In the story missions themselves, you're doing a lot of what the base game already had you doing: driving between locations, talking through dialogue while behind the wheel, sneaking into places, and getting into shootouts.

A handful of bigger set pieces break up that familiar routine.

One sequence has you riding in the back of a truck, lobbing dynamite at pursuers, and there's a proper chase sequence woven into the finale as well. It leans on you revisiting locations from the base game, but under a winter coat of snow, which genuinely changes how familiar areas feel and gives you a reason to slow down and take in the scenery again.

Outside the story, Salieri becomes your new point of contact in Free Ride, running his operation out of a warehouse in Porto Almaro. From there, he hands out jobs that have you cracking safes, stealing high-value cars, and racing stolen goods across town before rival crews can beat you to it.

This is one of the areas where Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor earns its price tag, and alongside the jobs are harder versions of Free Ride's existing challenge types: standoffs where you clear out wave after wave of enemies, stealth assassinations where getting spotted ruins the whole point, circuit races and road sprints against rival drivers, and time trials where you're only racing the clock.

Clearing these with a perfect score nets you the most in-game currency, so there's an incentive to actually master the earlier-1900s cars and weapons rather than just brute-forcing your way through. Combat in Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor plays out almost identically to the base game, which is to say, it's built around cover and period-accurate firearms that are deliberately clunky to aim.

Getting back into that combat takes a little relearning at first.

If you haven't touched the game in a while, expect an adjustment period; you'll probably eat a few unnecessary deaths in the opening minutes before your muscle memory kicks back in. Stealth is handled the same "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" way it always has been, and for the most part, that works fine, since sneaking past guards or picking off targets quietly still feels satisfying.

Where it stumbles a little is in one instant-fail stealth section near the climax, where getting spotted even once sends you straight back to the checkpoint. It's a short stretch, but the underlying stealth systems were never really built with that kind of strict no-detection pressure in mind, so it feels more punishing than clever.

There's also no knife-on-knife boss encounter this time around, which is a bit of a missed opportunity given how memorable those fights were in the main campaign. You might also run into a couple of minor bugs, including one moment during a chase where Enzo's animation glitches and gets stuck for a second, and some other small hiccups during cutscenes that briefly pull you out of otherwise strong scenes.

None of it is game-breaking, but it's noticeable in an expansion this compact, and it's the kind of thing you'd hope gets patched given how polished the rest of Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor feels. There isn't really an experience-point grind to speak of in this DLC, so you won't be farming enemies for levels or unlocking a skill tree.

Instead, everything you earn comes straight out of Free Ride.

Progression here is mostly about the rewards tied to completing jobs and challenges in Free Ride: three new guns, three new knives, five new charms, three new vehicles, two new horses, three outfits, and five hats. These additions don't dramatically shift how you play. The setting only allows for so much variety before it stops feeling period-appropriate.

Still, they give you a reason to keep engaging with Free Ride instead of dropping it once the story missions are done. Wanted posters return as a collectible too, and in a nice touch, the mugshots on them are actually stylized portraits of the game's own developers dressed for the era.

Stunt jumps let you send your car flying off ramps, and hunting down sulfur trucks to destroy ties directly into Salieri's revenge motive, giving that particular activity a bit more narrative purpose than a typical checklist task. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of touch that makes Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor feel considered rather than tacked on.

Visually, Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor sticks closely to what made the base game impressive in the first place. The Sicilian countryside still looks stunning, and setting these two chapters in winter was a smart choice, since it lets you see familiar valleys, towns, and roads dressed in an entirely different season.

The same detail shows up in the cast, though imperfectly.

Character models and cutscene animation remain strong throughout, and the way Salieri is presented, especially in his more volatile moments, makes him a genuinely magnetic presence on screen. That said, the expansion isn't completely free of rough edges.

Beyond the animation glitch you might run into during that chase sequence, there are a handful of small performance issues scattered through cutscenes that take a bit of shine off otherwise cinematic moments. It's not enough to sour the experience, but it's worth flagging if you're expecting a completely polished follow-up.

The sound design in Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor carries over the same quality that made the base game memorable. The score, composed by BT alongside the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, gives these two chapters the same sweeping, dramatic weight that defined the original soundtrack, and it's genuinely one of the parts of the expansion that stays with you after finishing it.

Voice acting is just as strong, with Don Torrisi in particular standing out every time he's on screen, despite his limited appearances; there's a real sense of intimidation whenever he shows up, which contrasts nicely with Salieri's more reckless energy.

A different actor voices this younger, rougher version of Salieri.

Salieri himself is voiced by Andrew Russell rather than Glenn Taranto, who played the older version of the character in the Definitive Edition remake. The change makes sense, given that you're meeting him earlier in life, with a slightly different accent reflecting where he's living at the time. Taking a step back, Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor is a solid but noticeably short addition to the base game.

The two new chapters deliver strong writing, a compelling look at where Salieri comes from, and some fun set pieces, but at two to three hours, they do leave you wanting more once the credits roll, especially if you're used to how much story content other narrative-driven expansions tend to pack in.

Where it makes up ground is in Free Ride, which finally feels like a mode worth returning to rather than an afterthought bolted onto the base game. Between the jobs, harder challenges, new collectibles, and fresh gear, there's a genuine reason to keep exploring Sicily after the story wraps, even if none of those additions individually reinvent what Free Ride already offered.

For ten dollars, you're getting a tightly written slice of backstory tied into one of the series' most important characters, wrapped in the same strong visuals and score that defined the base game, held back only by its brevity and a few technical rough patches.

If you already loved Mafia: The Old Country, this Man of Honor expansion gives you a good reason to book another trip to Sicily, even if it's a shorter stay than you might hope for.