Went on a Mafia binge thist past month and I gotta say
>Mafia 1 (DE) has the best story of the three, showing how mafias really work by taking in average joes and how there is never a "happy ending" when you enter the world of crime
>Mafia 2 feels very flawed, pacing is wierd and just in it's first real mission, you're already in gunfights with people. Gameplay is kinda lacking and the world feels oddly empty.
>Mafia 3 has good gameplay mechanics (shooting, takedowns, driving, they all feel and play fine) but possibly the single worst gameplay loop (talk to informant, do boring and repetitive tasks to rack up damage, go back to informant, kill racket boss, rinse and repeat until you unlock story missions which are marginally better but still the same). That on top of a story that feels like a blaxploitation movie written by Jordan Pelee with a whole racket dedicated to negroe slaves and multiple characters dedicated to "le black struggle" with Cassandra and The Voice (which btw have the single worst ending if left to run the city, they literally kill so much that the ghettos become and even worse place than before LOL). The DLCs though are actually good.