I've been looking forward to try this game out for myself after I played Mafia II and heard many different things about III. It's not exactly a bad game, but I definitely wouldn't call this a Mafia game.

The biggest issue is that the game is very repetitive. Most of the game is just taking over the districts and doing the wiretaps, which gets boring real fast. The story missions that are sprinkled between the district takeovers are actually pretty good, though, especially the intro.

The enemy AI is braindead when it comes to stealth. It's so easy to just whistle and pick enemies one-by-one while the rest don't stop to think why all of those poor sobs who went to check out that weird sound haven't returned yet.

I personally disliked how Mafia III departed from the realism and the details the OG Mafia and Mafia II had. Police no longer go after you for breaking traffic laws (except for crashing into a police car), you can see enemies through walls, have slow-mo shooting (which is ridiculously OP combined with silenced weapons) and slow-mo driving for some reason and the city feels shallow as you can't visit restaurants to eat anymore, buy clothes at clothing shops or refuel your car at gas stations since the fuel mechanic was also removed entirely.

The game still has bugs even after the release of so-called "definitive edition". The infamous mirror bug is still there (link to ss), cutscenes sometimes get stuck on the first frame while audio continues playing, and other fairly rare but still possible occurrences such as cars spawning clipped through the ground, enemies shooting through their own cover, infinite loading screens and the minimap getting stuck with extreme zoom. I tried playing this game using a Steam Controller since it has native support for it but often some buttons wouldn't respond until I paused and unpaused the game with kb+m. Eventually I got fed up with it and just switched to kb+m and had no problems with controls since. Also the performance could've been better for the graphics Mafia 3 has.

What I can praise, however, is the soundtrack, voice acting, overall atmosphere and the accurate portrayal of racism in 1960s USA. The story doesn't exactly fit the "Mafia" name but it's good. The DLCs have some cool missions that help break up the repetitiveness of the district takeovers.

I wasn't sure whether to give this game 2 or 3 stars, but I chose to go with 3, thanks to the DLC missions. If you can deal with the repetitiveness and go in not expecting a Mafia game then it may be worth getting this game on a good discount. Otherwise I'd just recommend watching it as a game movie on Youtube.

A open-world FPS-RPG from the same studio that made Fallout New Vegas. I was excited to see what did they make with this game, and I enjoyed it.

The game has a lot of gameplay similarities with Fallout New Vegas, but it feels a bit simplified. Still, it didn't stop me from having fun. The story that didn't take itself completely seriously was pretty good, but nothing special. The worlds were cool. I liked the conversation system that gives you lots of dialogue choices, ways to respond and often gives you skill checks to let you take advantage of the skills you have.

The drawbacks of this game is that it isn't that big. The planets aren't particularly huge and the main story is fairly short. The guns could've used more variety and the humor could've used a bit more work - it got a couple "heh"s out of me but not a single laugh out loud.

This game might not be the next Fallout but it's certainly a game worth trying for those who are into similar games. I'd like to see what they'll do with the sequel. I haven't played the DLC yet but I definitely will once I get the expansion pass someday.

Note: This is a review of a modded version of the original, non-LE game, mostly with texture and fix mods.

It's been about a year since I played ME1 so I thought it'd be a good time to continue the trilogy with ME2. ME1 was very good so I was really looking forward to ME2, and I was not disappointed.

ME2 took a large leap forwards, but it also took a few steps back. It was definitely much more polished than ME1 was, and the clunkiness was gone. The story is on around the same level as ME1 so it was great, but I regret putting off ME2 for too long because I already forgot about some things that happened in ME1 and I missed quite a lot of callbacks to the choices I made earlier. Gameplay, however, got simplified. While the first Mass Effect was too much of an RPG than a shooter, ME2 flipped it the other way around - less skills, less weapons, weapon/armor modifiers being replaced with general upgrades and the whole "landing on a planet and driving around it in a Mako" thing got replaced with not-so exciting planet scanning (except for a few DLC missions where you get to drive a cooler vehicle). At least the gunplay was much better and I didn't have to waste time converting my junk into omnigel. ME2 also introduces a new set of companions to recruit. I especially liked Mordin and Thane, but I also liked Legion, Kasumi, Grunt and maybe Jack.
I liked the suicide mission the most as it was quite a spectacular finale. I thought I'd get someone in my squad killed but fortunately, everyone made it out just fine!
The DLCs were good as well, especially Lair of the Shadow Broker and Kasumi - Stolen Memory.

Overall I really liked ME2. I chose to play ME3 immediately after so I wouldn't make that mistake with the callbacks again.
Thanks Cece09 for the gift!

Note: This is a review of a heavily modded version of the original, non-LE game, with mods such as Expanded Galaxy Mod, The Orikon Collection, Project Variety, JohnP's Alternate MEHEM and more.

An epic conclusion to an equally epic trilogy. ME3 feels like the most ambitious game out of the three, bringing the best of its 2 predecessors. While the ending remains fairly controversial, it still manages to provide a satisfying culmination of all that has happened to this point.

As for the gameplay, Bioware finally got the RPG-shooter balance nailed down on their third attempt. ME3, compared to ME2 has expanded skills, much more weapon variety, gun mods and still no wasting time on inventory management. Controls felt a little bit different than in ME2 but I got used to them quickly. Also it seems like there were a lot less neutral dialogue options in ME3 compared to ME1 or 2. The final mission was my favorite. It was thrilling to see all the war assets, all the favors I pulled across the trilogy come into play at that one battle, and, under great pressure, I was doing my absolute best to get through as fast as I could before I'd hear about some of my allies getting destroyed over the radio.

The Mass Effect trilogy are some of my favorite games now. I've found myself attached to the universe, to the lore and all my squadmates on the Normandy. It was an absolute joy to go through all of it and I'd consider it a must play for anyone. Next up is Andromeda. I know it was panned when it first came out but now people say that this game actually isn't that bad so I'm willing to check it out.

Oh, and since I couldn't upload the screenshots on Steam, I'll show them here instead, in separate non-spoiler and spoiler categories. Some of them are too good to just let them rot on my PC forever.