Seems like reviewers hate everything lately.

Just completed the game on hard. Sadly, I've to partially agree with RPS and some of the angry mob. I'll just copy and paste what I posted on another forum when I was at the 2nd last mission:

"I've to partially agree with RPS's statement about the lack of emotion in various parts of the game. I have no idea whether that's because of the cutting of content for DLC.
Where in Mafia 1, you work at the start to gain the trust of the family, afterwhich you actually feel like part of the family. You wanted be loyal to the Don. In Mafia 2, I felt like a merc, never a part of any mafia family, never felt loyal to anyone.
Seems like Mafia 2 likes throwing plot turns at you without much development in the story. In Mafia 1, the Don asks you to destroy a rival mafia Don, the game made you really HATE him through cutscenes and gameplay. You also hated the rival Don's brother through a period of at least 3-4 missions. Mafia 2 throws a sudden plot event and expects you to like/hate the character involved, which succeeds for some and fails for the rest.
And the game only pickups somewhat late in the game. The Prison scene was great, but after that it's dull again, till somewhat later. Also sometimes when you play the game, you'll like to ask yourself, why am I helping this person or that person. Attachment to some characters in the game is weaker compared to what you get in Mafia 1.
Checkpoint system is always retarded in PC games, but it does really become a bother at the end missions if you're on harder difficulties. The Asian character models are horrible. The game is kinda racist to Chinese in general but I'm surprised they got Chinese voiceacting for them instead of speaking English much like how Deus Ex had Cantonese for the people in Hong Kong, which is a good thing.
Still Mafia 2 has a good enough story to keep you engaged to play from start to end, it's just that it's not epic like Mafia 1 but at least it manages to make you feel attached to Joe and Henry and maybe, Leo. It has a great atmosphere, driving at a snowy night with Dean Martin's "Let it Snow" playing in the car is plain epic. Driving is very fine, don't know what the complains are about, my only complaint is that there is no Manual Gear transmission unlike Mafia 1. Gunfights are satisfying and fun, cover system is like ME2 and Gears of War. Mafia 2 is a 7.5-8/10 game in my book whereas Mafia 1 is a > 11/10 game."
And then I completed the game and my further statements:
"Ending is horsesh*t. It's a downright insult compared to Mafia 1. It's basically saying "You wanna know how it goes, pay $10 for future DLC". And I'm super anti-DLC."
Some folks seem to have compiled a list of cut content from Mafia 2, heck I don't see or use any melee weapons. In Mafia 1, I get to beat up a bunch of thugs with a baseball bat who messed with Tommy's girl. Don't see that in vanilla Mafia 2. Sad.
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85018
Additional badpoints:
- No FreeRide Mode unlike Mafia 1
- No non-XBOX gamepad support (Have to mod, long live modders!)
- No steering wheel support (Have to mod, long live modders!)
- Retarded checkpoints
- Compulsory Steam
The 2nd patch actually screwed the game. My game CTD and couldn't start anymore. Had to reinstall and replay. My friend had it worse, he reinstalled, saved games got corrupted and had to replay from start, then he got it again, and restarted from beginning again for 3 times. Thanks to Steam default auto-patcher.

I played the game on console, and I really liked it. Keep in mind that I've never played the first Mafia, so I may not have the same point of reference as most.
I will agree that the ending is horseshit, and that I felt like there was absolutely no loyalty involved with the main character. He's constantly fucking over his partners because they do this one little thing he doesn't like. Of course I can't speak from personal experience, from the mafia I've seen in movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas (which the game borrows heavily from), family members don't do that to each other.

Play Mafia if you can. You can get from Gamersgate or Steam for cheap. There's a reason why everyone keeps saying it's an Epic. I, myself, think its story can match up to The Godfather itself. Mafia 1 has ALOT more emotion, you feel for many characters. Character development is solid and can be compared to the character development of the "innocent" Michael Corleone.

It's a very different story from Mafia's... it's about a thug who only cares for himself, yes. I don't think that makes it bad... it was more Goodfellas than Godfather, and your mileage may vary on what that means to you.
On the ending I don't agree with the criticism, and let me explain why:
SPOILERS/
Vito takes down the other two families, leaving only the one. Vito also gets into a lot of trouble and gets out of it only by more and more killing. In the end the only person he has that he cares about is Joe, and at the end of the game they take Joe away from him so he can save himself. What does he do? He accepts it... he gets made, but then relaxes. In the end he only cares about himself, and he loses his friend (and earlier in the game his Mother and Sister and Henry) because of it. It's a tragic tale of a man who loses everything because of his selfish interests.
/SPOILERS
Mafia was a tale of an honorable man gone wrong because of the lure of a Mafia that sold itself as honorable but really wasn't. Mafia 2 is the tale of a thug who takes what he wants and pays the price for it by losing all the actual important things in life.
Both are valid, neither is incomplete. If Vito's story continues in DLC I will eat my hat, I don't believe for a second that was intended or would be okayed by 2K Czech. The ending is the ending.

Well that's the tragedy of the ending and the results of his actions... what can he do? It's done, there is nothing, he HAS to accept it.

Well, he has to accept that Joe is dead, and he contributed to his death-that much of the ending I like. My point, though, is all that what we've learned about Vito tells us that he'll seek revenge-even if it may lead to his death, and that's why his inaction bothers me. He doesn't HAVE to accept Joe's death, even though it would expose him to harm.
By the way, that might be the ending I'd like to see-Vito seeking revenge, perhaps killing those responsible, but getting gunned down at the end. That would still thematically fit with what you're saying-he either accepts Joe's death and lives, or he doesn't accept it and dies. It doesn't seem in his character to do nothing.
Let me be clear-Vito getting revenge and surviving would also be dramatically unsatisfying to me. Acting out of revenge would be in character for him, but for him to survive would lessen the consequences of Joe's death as well as the mistakes that got Joe killed in the first place.

I guess I understand that... remember though that the man in the car with him is a friend as well, and "like a father" to him. Not sure he would start shooting in that instance.
It is kind of open-ended in a way, will he seek revenge or will he continue to work in the mob? Will he change his ways given what he has lost or will he stay the game? That said I think that is more a natural open-ended thing, rather than a to be continued. A ton of movies end with similar questions, that doesn't mean they're planning DLC or sequels.
I mean, I could be wrong. We'll see I guess.

I also considered that. Leo is one of the men that Vito risked everything to save, so Vito is conflicted, to say the least. In that light, I can at least appreciate the ending. Not every story needs to be neatly wrapped up (I really liked the ending to No Country for Old Men, for example).

So the game lacks a free ride mode. That's what kept me playing the first so long. I don't see me bothering with this one unless it's very cheap, personally.

I'm a Mafia 1 fanboy and Mafia 1 is one of my favourite games of all time. So, naturally, I enjoyed playing through Mafia 2 though of course my expectations are quite high on it.
It's just that the story expects you to react after a sudden event. Spoilers(Stop reading if you wanna avoid):
Like when Marty died, Joe was devastated, I'm supposed to feel for him after he died but I don't coz prior to that I've seen him in only 1-2 missions and that's a cameo appearance. And I'm supposed to hate Clemente after he killed Marty but I don't. Compared to the part where I let Frank go and trying to Morello's brother in Mafia 1, there's a big difference for emotions there.
Even Henry, the game expects you to get attached to him after the shootout with Porky and before that he's also a cameo appearance, luckily the game made up for him in the later levels.
Then there's the dude I worked for at the docks, all the sudden I found out he killed Vito's father and I have to kill him. The game made me hate him alright, but that's only because of how he treated his workers and he was the asshole who kept spamming molotov cocktails and making me restart that level for at least 10 times coz of the stupid checkpoint system.
(spoilers end)
Maybe I'm overreacting to the ending part. But it just feels incomplete to me considering Mafia 1's ending was so complete, had a twist in it and then somemore. But still that's the fact that 2K did cut content out of the game. It's an annoying fact, the type that makes me lose respect of publishers the moment they do so. To me cutting content and selling it as DLC is daylight robbery.

I haven't seen proof of that... the game was in development for 6 years, of course things were cut. Every game ever made had things cut, and maybe at one point they were going to go more GTA with it but then decided not to. No one really knows... I haven't seen anything that says the Jimmy content was originally supposed to be in the game, and more to the point a 14 hour linear game is well above standard now-a-days and far from short, and as long as the original.
So I don't get that complaint.
The story stuff is subjective and I don't think it's perfect by any means, just good and better than a lot of people give it credit for, especially the ending. When the camera panned up toward the end I was like "annnnnd credits" because it felt like an ending to me. I was surprised at the surprise.

This:
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85018&page=5
And then the melee weapons, I never got to use them in the game, I never saw a place to buy them in the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRVjFtReMYU
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3e8a035ebc.jpg
And I heard they removed the link that linked to the Mafia 2 FreeRoam Mod.
I really like Leo. If the game made him a Don, I probably would be more loyal to him than I would at Salieri. For some reason he reminds me of Brooks in Shawshank Redemption:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/2/12/1234453085638/American-Actor-James-Whit-001.jpg

Again, things being cut is normal for a game.
I'm not trying to be confrontational, I just think people automatically assume because of DLC that nefarious things are going on. Every game has cuts and any game made over 6 years is going to have a lot of changes. I don't see anything in that thread or others that proves to me I got screwed in any way.
And again, and probably most important, the game itself is lengthy and worth the money I paid for it easily.