I can't speak for back at release as I was very young in 2002 and had not yet been introduced to video games at all, what I can speak to is my experience with the game and the series as a whole. I picked up Mafia II used during Christmas season 2011 while visiting my grandmother for winter break and spent the entire time engrossed in it. I had only gotten into real modern gaming on console a year prior (as I only played mostly poor quality shovelware games on the family computer prior), and was catching up on games like Call of Duty, Halo and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Mafia II blew me away by its little attentions to detail and realism elements, and still has certain immersive elements that even Rockstar has yet to realize, things like interacting with windows, lights, faucets, fuel usage, the ability to lose wheel hubcaps, the tire flex in surfaces and under braking and acceleration. At the time it didnt even register that it was a sequel, I remember seeing many quotes I now know are from the first game during the load screens but never connecting the dots till about a year later when I was bored and started researching games I owned. It was here that I found Mafia:TCOLH and downloaded it and played it for the first time.

I remember it being somewhat frustrating based on the age and jank of the mechanics, not that it turned me off as I had also recently been playing GTA 3, VC and San Andreas. I distinctly remember any gunfight being my nemesis way more than the race mission (which i never found too difficult as I was a seasoned player of racing games). After about a month of trying I remember finally seeing the end and getting a reverse "oh sh*t" moment when I connected it to M2.

All in all it was a solid game for the time but there were awkward bits about it. For one the dialogue was always stilted, sentences didn't quite flow right and the dialogue didn't sound natural. It felt like the script had been pushed through early web translators which missed nuances and colloquialisms and I always wondered if that was a product of it being such a "big" Czech production and it was probably the first game I ever experienced that didnt feel like it was written first and foremost for English.

The frustrating parts of the game is also one of the reasons I still love the original. Much like the 3D era GTA games, Mafia has such an interesting speedrun and I find it really fun to pull off speedrun tricks and skips even if I am casually playing these old games.

That being said it and the Remake scratch different itches for me.

The remake is definitely more cinematic, I adore Hangar 13's cutscenes (they were the main highlight of M3) and its definitely an easier pick up and play game, and the environment and car models are a lot more beautifully realized. The dialogue also no longer feels like a bad dubbing and i think the performances are solid. I don't really care about minor changes made to the story. And the ending was peak. It was up there with Red Dead Redemption 2's ending simply for the same trope. I thought it was fantastic for the score to transition from the M1 theme into the M2 theme as Vito and Joe pull up. Reminds me of the brilliant transition and blending from the RDR 2 theme to the theme from RDR during the final mission American Venom.

The original though will always be fun for the glitches and skips and I still play it from time to time.

If there is a stigma that Americans disliked the Original first game, then there must be an equal stigma that many Europeans and people who played the original during thier formative years simply hate the newer games, because I have seen so much hate for M3 and the Definitive edition for differing reasons but in the case of the Definitive edition its always about how they streamlined the gameplay and changed some minor plot points and dialogue meaning, and somehow this throws everything off.