YMMV / Mafia II

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was Henry an undercover cop, an informant, or set up by Falcone? Evidence to the idea he was a rat? The fact that his backstory has numerous holes in it, the cops always show up in his missions, and Leo confirms it. One of the developers actually gave Word of Saint Paul that he was innocent of betraying Vito, though.
  • Is Leo a Cool Old Guy, Evil Old Folks, or a Retired Monster? His betrayal at the end is something that can either be chalked up to Pragmatic Villainy as he probably had to pull a lot of favors just to save Vito or an example that he knew it would devastate Vito emotionally. Vito considers him a Broken Pedestal by Mafia III either way, regardless of Joe's fate.
  • Regarding Harry Marsden, the injured WWII vet that gives Vito a machine gun for a hit, some players wonder if the trading of war stories is just him being a Motor Mouth or if he's secretly questioning Vito about being a legitimate soldier. When Vito tells Henry he served too, Henry's joy over meeting another soldier comes off as too happy, almost sarcastic, as if he doesn't believe him.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • The Sicilian Mafia actually did help in the Italian theater of the war, providing logistical support, maps, and translators for the United States forces. While popular myth depicts Calogero Vizzini as having provided extensive support to Allied troops who invaded Sicily (as depicted in the prologue where Don Calo urged the fascist troops to surrender while on board a Sherman tank), most historians downplay his role as he had next to no influence due to prefect Cesare Mori's persecution of the mob on Benito Mussolini's orders.
  • The Italian-American Mafia actually did do a thriving business in falsifying papers which fraudulently discharged men out of service during WWII.
• Anvilicious: The game can be pretty blatant about its moral stance on Mafia activities. Many characters you work with are repugnant, and you never get to enjoy the luxuries that crime affords for very long before something takes them away. The game can even be seen as a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story.
  • Of special note is the stance against drug-dealing. Just about every character associated with drugs dies at some point, with Vito being the sole exception perhaps because he only reluctantly agrees to deal drugs due to losing everything he had shortly before then. It's noteworthy that the only mob boss that doesn't die is Vinci, who has a strong distaste for drug-dealing unlike the other bosses. Possibly, Subverted as the biggest drug dealer in the game is Vito.
• Awesome Music:
  • Aside from the licensed tracks, the actual score is excellent: sometimes pulse-pounding, and sometimes incredibly sad and haunting. Try the main theme, or the pause theme, which sounds like it was composed by Thomas Newman. The pause theme, in particular, sounded like as if it came off the Series of Unfortunate Events soundtrack, as it was reminiscent of The Baudelaire Orphans.
  • The licensed tracks are pretty good though, particularly the scripted ones.
• Contested Sequel: Given that Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven is a Cult Classic, this was to be expected. While it was liked well enough, many people criticized it for its unsympathetic characters, simplified gameplay and lack of Free Ride Mode, making it extremely short and without any real replay value.
• Continuity Lockout: Those who started with Mafia II or otherwise haven't played The City of Lost Heaven may not know who Tommy is and dismiss him as just another guy Vito and Joe whack. This isn't quite a bad thing, though, since Vito and Joe would absolutely dismiss Tommy as just another guy to whack just like an ignorant player.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: "The old game was a tribute to gangster movies, a romantic vision. Mafia II is grittier, real, a darker world, and the effects are based in reality." - Daniel Vávra, Writer and Director of Mafia explaining the decision to make the sequel Darker and Edgier.
• He's Just Hiding: At the end of the game, it's heavily implied that Joe is killed. Of course, since we don't actually see the deed itself, a lot of people are convinced that Joe survives the events of the game, even though it was pretty clear that those guys weren't exactly taking him out for a nice night on the town.
  • However, Joe has proven himself both durable and able to win a fight, and considering that there were only two guys with him in the other car (one was the driver and one sat next to Joe), one could imagine that he could incapacitate both fairly easy. At least he was armed when he entered the car...
  • According to Vito in Mafia III Joe managed to escape the hitman taking him in their car, and escaped to Chicago. Unfortunately, he was betrayed by the people he turned to for help, and was subsequently mutilated and murdered by them. Vito sends Lincoln Clay on a series of assassination jobs to take out the people responsible for it. However, despite Vito's story the game never truly confirms Joe whether Joe's alive or dead. Vito says he never found Joe's body and says he assumes Joe must be dead since he never got into contact with him. The biggest hint that Joe's still alive is at the end of the game, where Leo Gallante's driver briefly looks at the camera, and though he's in shadow, he looks near identical to Joe^note His model and textures in the game files are actually named "Joe". So Joe may literally just be hiding.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: An early mission where you have to stack crates in the back of a truck for a lousy 10 bucks. The mission ends with you saying screw it and informing your boss that you come for a better job. The kicker? Now you're sent out the office to collect cash from all of the employees in the warehouse, collecting 10 dollars from each. In other words: if you had completed the job you got offered first, you would've spent a lot of time earning only 10 bucks, only to lose it immediately.
  • That becomes a Cerebus Callback later on, when it's revealed that Derek killed Vito's father, because he took exception to Derek's Bad Boss ways.
• Hype Backlash: While the game has received generally positive reviews, many have criticized it for its relatively short length (around 10 hours) and lack of things to do outside of missions, as compared to other sandbox games (the fact that a lot of features were Dummied Out didn't really help). So a lot of people, who were expecting something along the lines of Grand Theft Auto Rocks The 1950s, were let down.
  • And reversed with fans of the original, who felt that with the Regenerating Health, One Bullet Clips and lack of difficulty combined with an Anachronism Stew took away the realism of the original that made it so great. As such the gameplay was Lighter and Softer, while the story tried so hard to be Darker and Edgier that it lost some character. Basically it ended up managing to make both fans hoping for a GTA game or a sequel Mafia both disappointed!
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Quite a few reviewers complain that even with the Hard difficulty and Realistic driving modes on few missions offer any real challenge, especially compared to the unforgiving nature of the first game (look above).
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: One of the biggest criticisms of the game is how brief the story mode is. It doesn't help that there's no side missions or collectibles, which makes the Wide-Open Sandbox aspect feel pointless.
• Memetic Mutation:
  "Right, Steve?"
  "Suuuure, Derek."^ExplanationA recurring line where Derek asks his associate Steve about what he said, with Steve affirming it.
• Narm: Settle down Vito, we know you're hyped up on adrenaline, but shut up about the barber already.
  • HEY! HEY, WATCHU DOIN' MOTHAFUCKA?!
  • "Holy shit, what a fucking disappointment!"^ExplanationA line uttered by Joe Barbaro, which was popularized by the late Kitty0706's Mass Defect as well used in response to something which is deemed disappointing, like Mafia III for example.
• Narm Charm: In Definitive Edition, presumably due to a glitch, the tense cutscene in "Per Aspera Ad Astra" where Leo orders Vito to kill Falcone in exchange for his life inexplicably has the former's eyes unnaturally rolled to the side. As silly as it looks, it also makes it more tense since it makes it look like Leo is so furious at Vito that he can't even bear to look at him.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Many fans of the original Mafia dislike the game particularly because very few of the original staff were on its dev team, and most of them left during production.
• Player Punch: For people who played the first game, Vito and Joe turning out to be the ones who killed Tommy Angelo was a shocking reveal.
• Porting Disaster:
  • Take 2 has apologized for making the PlayStation 3 version of Mafia II the least feature rich version, compared to the PC (which is the fullest experience) and Xbox 360 versions.
  • The Definitive Edition released for Play Station 4, Xbox One, and PC has a large number of issues, including poor performance despite the more powerful hardware and minimal upgrades to the visuals, and numerous additional glitches not found in the original. Cloth physics were removed from the campaign, but bizarrely enough are fully intact in the DLC, and fire physics were also removed.
• That One Level: Chapter 14, Stairway to Heaven. Also known as the dockworker strike level. Enjoy the insanely bad checkpoints.
  • "Enemy of the State". You start off doing a stealth mission, which ends badly regardless of what you do. The entrance is swarming with cops and you have to escape the way you came in from, out of a bathroom window, likely with cops shooting at you the whole while. Wanted, you have to evade more police and get back to Henry. Oh, but what's this?! The tickets you stole expire at midnight! Hurry and deposit them at gas stations before the time limit ends. Said time limit continues even as your character has an unskippable conversation with the attendants. They won't talk to you if you are wanted, which you probably will be because you have to speed if you want to make it. Finally, as icing on the cake, you can't kill anyone or you forfeit a bonus.
    • You can turn off the alarm in the basement and get out of a window on the second floor. You also lose the bonus if you alarm the cops and not just killing anybody.
  • "In Loving Memory of Francesco Potenza". Not due to difficulty (it's the only chapter in the game to have no enemies) but because it's a long chapter with Checkpoint Starvation. You literally have only one autosave in the whole chapter, so you better have free time when you play it.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It can be hard to root for Vito to make his life a good living for him again, especially considering the fact that he happens to be a jerk who ended up in a gangster life.
• Vindicated by History: Compared to when the game was first released, the game has received more and more praise for its story, gameplay, and customization choices, even with the complaints about the game's sandbox-style map not really being used to its full potential. Not helped by the fact that many of those that played this title were disappointed by Mafia III, which lacked a lot of these features. Even the game's lack of sandbox side activities seems less negative given the heavy criticism Mafia III received for being excessively grindy and repetitive by making 80% of the main campaign essentially sandbox side activities.

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