RPG and story-wise it's mediocre, but the combat system against multiple opponents is so bad it's unplayable.
The grind in this game is insane... even after the "first" ending. I gave up on the container trap room (very close to the "first" ending) after dying several times there and then watched a couple streamers do the complete run and get the "first" and the"final" ending. However, I do recommend this game because the whole journey to the final area called "Hell" is really fun regardless of whether you're going full completionist. It will hook you up.
I played 50 hours with all assigned sidequests done, and all in all it's a pretty solid AAA title and as of the current version I didn't experience any bugs. I totally get the new simplified and shared inventory and its logic works just fine; I don't see why folks complain about it. Gameplay was a solid 5. However, what makes it overall a 4/5 was some really unexpected storyline stuff like the solutions to the Gippers and Valor being pretty unlikely/unpredictably dumb and the fact that stealth not always works, with area triggers that opens dialog and the bad guys might get the jump on you no matter how stealthy you were. Overall, I recommend this game on wastelander difficulty with friendly fire on and permadeath on. It's a good challenge but it won't be impossible.
It's tough, but I beat the classic mode after quite some tries. It's a challenging game, and the mechanics are a bit confusing at first. Sometimes the amount of new alerts per turn is going to be overwhelming and you are likely to let something critical slip by. It also involves a bit of luck not to strike midnight in the doomsday clock, since that depends on the other nations' choices too. There are a few bugs but none was a deal-breaker.
Cool graphics, intense fighting, cool futuristic concepts. One of the best cyberpunk action games around. It's very tough even on normal difficulty, but easy mode was kinda too easy. I missed something in-between normal and easy. If you want a real challenge, go ahead.
Major improvement over the Mafia I system, for sure. A lot smoother controls and gorgeous graphics. There are some glitches though, but my overall experience was not ruined or anything. I don't why get all the complaints here. Gameplay-wise, although the police system is very smart, it's unrealistic how there's a cop car in every corner. And the gunfights defy belief in that the amount of bad guys is just wave after wave of guys with Thompsons that would make any crime massacre in history look like a street mugging. The game would be less arcade-ish if they made you less of a damage sponge while decreasing the amount of bad guys significantly. That's pretty much the same beef I had with LA Noire's combat too. It's just insane. By the way, gameplay-wise Mafia II and LA Noire are very much the same, and also both set in post-war America. While in LA Noire you're a detective, In Mafia II you are obviously the bad guy going GTA.
There is a certain clunkiness and times you just don't know what to do, especially at the beginning. The driving feels nice and it's OK considering it's a GTA 3 era driving game. If you like action driving games, it's worth it at sale price.
Controls and camera angles will lead to death more often than in Legend. I don't know what were they thinking when it was clear that controls were this bad compared to previous games. Lack of playtesting maybe? Anyway, puzzles are fun enough and locations are beautiful, so it's still worth it.
Compared to previous games in the franchise, controls for acrobatics are much smoother and things work fine, although some camera angles are quite unhelpful. Combat control is clunky but not terrible, but it makes boss fights quite difficult. Auto-holstering the weapons really sucks during combat, so you have to keep an eye on this.
Compared to IO Interactive's stellar titles in the Hitman series, Kane & Lynch Dead Men (2007) is inferior even to Hitman: Codename 47 (2000), even though it was released after Hitman: Blood Money (2006)! What were they thinking?! The controls are clunky, cover mechanics doesn't work well, you rarely seem to have a stealth option so you just get into linear gunfights with stupid teammate AI and must kill swarms upon waves of police officers and SWAT, which sounds VERY realistic, right? Really, forget about this game unless you just like shooting (with bad controls).
