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Well, just watched the credits roll so I can chime in now.
Bought it off Steam for EUR 10.00 a week ago when it was on sale, 75% off. For that price, it was definitely worth it.
Overall, not a great game.
The shooter part of it was better than average, meaning hitboxes worked pretty much flawlessly, the NPCs took damage just how I was expecting, weapons were nicely effective and sounded alright, the cover system was a welcome tactical consideration most of the time, and I rarely ran out of hitpoints thanks to the "free healing" system.
The game ran beautifully. I ran it at 2560x1600 with all settings maxed except antialiasing which was disabled and A-Filtering which I'd toned down to 8x. Hiccups were very rare and in very predictable situations.
However, that's about all there is to say about it that's good.
I'm thinking the game ran well because the graphics aren't that good. They're basically shapes from 2006-2007 with some high detail textures and new lighting/reflection/environment manipulation features. For example, character models and animation were really bad compared to something like the opening video of Civilization 5, or even Half-Life 2, the latter of course being ridiculously old by now in comparison to Mafia II and still better.
Like you said the characters were mostly very underdeveloped which is unforgivable in a "movie for the gamer". When there's nothing to a game except an extremely scripted story, like in this case, the characters really need to be in the spotlight. These ones were mostly forgettable or annoying, except for the two main characters.
There was a nice tie-in to the first Mafia game which I thought was cool, though I did see it coming from a mile away.
The city is almost completely lifeless and featureless. After completing the game I still wouldn't be able to navigate in it without the map/GPS. There was no incentive at all to explore and I wasn't gently directed towards learning my way around either. And after the credits have rolled, you're kicked out of the game and can't roam the city with your accumulated cash, cars and weapons. As far as I could see my only options were to start a new game or DLC.
During the story, there was too much driving, like has been said. The problem was that the missions were all around the place. Every once in a while you get a new place but it makes no difference as far as mission distance is concerned. This also contributes to the unfamiliar-city-problem as you very rarely go any place more than once. What they should've done is what GTA does, which is concentrate missions of a specific chapter in a specific neighborhood and give the player a base to operate from in that 'hood. That way the travel times don't get out of hand and you learn the city block by block.
The cars were mostly alright but clearly there is a shortage of choice. There's only a few fast cars and they all look the same. Also, the controls were very weird, GTA does car control much better than Mafia II. In this game I was snaking all over the place with the cars because of the way the on-off steering input is translated.
Melee combat was interesting for the first couple of fights. Then I found out they were going to show off that feature over and over and over again for loooong periods of time, particularly in the prison sequence, where all you do for an entire chapter is fight guys with your bare hands. After a few fights you realize the whole feature is basically just about grinding your mouse buttons in rapid succession like the game tells you on the screen. In short, a stupid console game feature that hasn't been translated for the PC in a very interesting way.
Speaking of console translation, you can't strafe in this game, except while aiming your weapon. Strafe keys move the character face first in different directions which of course makes the character slow to control accurately . . . not exactly the best mechanism for a fast-paced shooter where mistakes are often fatal, due to the low hitpoints of the protagonist.
The cover mechanic was sometimes frustrating when the character aligned against a completely mindless surface or the wrong way round. The latter usually results in death as the character exposes parts of his body from the cover.
Another thing you can't do is save. In addition to making you take a break when the game lets you, that feature makes the game infinitely more frustrating in difficult combat sequences. Often you have to repeat a fight because the next fight killed you. And when a fight kills you in this game it's usually in a situation where it does so numerous times before you figure out your tactical error. So basically all the situations where this problem surfaced were a matter of there not being a save point when there should've been, which is typical for this mechanic, and should have caused most game developers to abandon the mechanic long ago IMHO.
When the game is so scripted to the last detail, and because of the lack of free roam, the "collect porn mags" feature, achievements, unlockable artwork etc. all seem pointless. As do the statistics. Apparently I've killed about 400 NPCs. I'm guessing the number is about the same for everyone who completed the story, because usually the NPCs are so specifically scripted to appear very near you in tight pipelike spaces that you couldn't possibly complete the level without killing them.
Sometimes the NPCs spawn out of thin air behind you which of course is an unforgivable game design decision. Usually this happens in late game where there are other idiotisms as well to make the game artificially more difficult.
Speaking of spawning, there seems to be some of the same issue that was IIRC in GTA: San Andreas. Namely, types of civilian car appear in relation to what you're currently driving, meaning if you're in a crap car and looking for a faster car, you'll be on the lookout for a comparatively long time, and if you're finally in a cool car, you'll immediately see more and more citizens driving them.
But even more annoying than that is the police, who seem to have an infinite operating budget in Empire Bay since there's at least one police car and a couple of officers per block. It's almost impossible to get anywhere without there constantly being police on your radar. This makes it difficult to "conduct business", but more importantly, causes instances of save-load-load-load-load where a mission leaves you with a wanted status and you're supposed to get to safety. Only there's a damned police car everywhere you turn.
The only positive about the police is that they've toned down the ticketing from Mafia 1. They will now very rarely stop you for speeding or running a red. But if you do run a red and look into the traffic to make sure you aren't gonna hit anything, chances are you will rear end a police car in the direction you're headed and not looking...
For a tenner it's a decent amount of entertainment, for 40 it's an absolute ripoff.
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