That probably seems like a silly question with an obvious answer, but I thought I'd ask anyway. Do the games have great enough stories to just warrant them to be seen fully through? Here's a little history of me and the Mafia franchise. With Mafia I, it was something that had grabbed my attention early on but it wasn't until around 2010 I think that I found the game on the original Xbox in a Value Village. I took it home and played up until a church part where I gave up because the game by that time just controlled badly enough I didn't want to get through it. It was to my surprise that I read later that the Xbox version actually reviewed poorly in comparison to the PC version, which makes sense. I'd still be curious how the PC version holds up.

Mafia 2 came along and was something I enjoyed playing the demo of several times but I didn't have the money to buy it on release so I didn't. I gave up on playing it but went ahead and bought it in 2015 digitally to finally give it a go. It started off promising, and I enjoyed it for about 50 percent of the time I played it, but the game became monotonous and I just moved on. The third-person shooting gameplay felt like it got worse and the driving from point A to B throughout most of the experience got dull. Something that also grabbed my attention early on was what I thought was a great soundtrack.

Mafia 3 I got for free as a buy two get one free at Target. That game (though not as strongly as two) started off well but again, became repetitive coupled with at least one broken side mission and like two, a story that didn't get interesting enough in what I experienced. I don't quite remember where I stopped in two, but in three, the last time I played it I stopped at the part where you're at the Irish guy's car lot helping defend his place. The gunplay is fine, but it's just all too repetitive and not enough grabbed my attention elsewhere. Some good radio music, albeit not enough songs and some good bits of incidental dialogue between NPC's.

I ask this now because the Mafia 2 is now on backward compatible with the One. Should I give both games another chance? I am wondering if I just missed a good portion of what makes them worth seeing through and really appreciate.

Mafia III is not a good game period. My broken side missions were stealing boats that never materialized.

@marcsman: Yep, that's the one. It was a marijuana boat mission. The boat wouldn't be there when I tried going to do the mission.

Mafia 1 is actually back on Steam now after being gone for several years if that interests you. Its super dated now though.
Mafia 2 was good, not great. I would've enjoyed it more if they would've just made the entire thing either linear or went the full open-world route. The halfway in, halfway out thing sorta bugged me. If you like movies like The Godfather, The Untouchables, and ESPECIALLY Goodfellas, then the game is right up your alley. The DLC with Joe is pretty decent. There is a neat Easter Egg that connects 1 and 2 in the game.
Mafia 3 is weird game. It never really knows what it wants to be. There are a lot of little things I liked about it, but the overall game is very shallow. Most games are repetitive in natural, but the great ones structure them in a creative way. Mafia 3 DOES NOT. By the time your 5-6 hours in, the game never deviates from the same formula...and that continues for another 12-15 hours. If you beat 2 and are curious how it connects to 3, Vito is in it, but there are appearances by two Mafia 2 characters that show up at THE VERY END if that's your thing. Joe (which is debated) and Leo

I haven't played, nor do I plan on playing any of the Mafia 3 DLC.

I actually ended up replaying Mafia 3 last year. While it's certainly not very imaginative on the gameplay side I thoroughly enjoy the story in that game. It might drag a bit in the middle, but it gets pretty great towards the end. I'm also sort of a sucker for collect-a-thons though, so that helps.

Exactly. It showed up once, I got it and for some reason it did not register. Never showed up again. After that I kind of gave up on Mafia III. After a few cocktails, I'll put it in play one mission and then think this game stinks why am I playing it when I got a backlog of games way better than it.

@marcsman: I did one mission and then immediately after went to go do it again because I liked exhausting things in open world games to check them off a list, but the next opportunity, and no matter how many updates the game had, the boat wouldn't be there to even do the mission. I've gone back to the game about three or four times and always quit soon after because it was a bore.

@atastyslurpee: Wow! Thanks for the update. My PC isn't great at playing PC games so I don't check Steam much other than messages, but I checked for the first Mafia just a few months ago and was disappointed to see it not on there. This is great. I might get it. And if you mean easter egg by the scene of someone's death from the first game, then I unfortunately already know about it since I kind of spoiled it for myself some months back watching some video about the game's story. This was probably around the time I was interested to know if the first game was on Steam. I know Vito is in three because I've gotten that far, but that was already known when they first showed the game off before it came out, and I totally read your spoiler... Ha ha. Oh well.

I noticed that they took all the licensed music out of the first Mafia game on Steam... Boo.

Edit - Just got done restarting Mafia 2 and playing it a bit. Man, it got boring fast and I just uninstalled it again. I'm not going through them.