I'll take a quote from the movie A Bronx tale and just say this; "The saddest thing in life is wasted talent."
It seems like EA knew the game wasn't coming along that well in development so they put a lot of money into ad space and just forced the game out of the door. Either that or the developers couldn't flesh out their ideas that well and we got the best they could do. Whichever way you care to see it the Don's View, which turns an action game into a partial strategy game was a terrific addition that composed too small of a portion for my tastes.
Instead we got healthy portions of subpar 3rd person shooting against enemy AI that wouldn't have even been adequate two generations ago. The friendly AI was just as bad but at least the player has a bit of control over them so they won't spend all their time stuck on walls or standing still. The lack of a capable AI ruins pretty much every aspect of the gameplay as the shooting definitely takes a hit and then to top it off, it corrupts the strategic element of the game because there's no plan of attack from the competing families. It seems they'd rather work alone and attack random properties rather team up against a common foe or plan an effective offensive rush.
I'll talk about the highlights of the Don's View. There are crime rings scattered all over the map such as escort services and gun running and each of these rackets have two or more locations on the map. If a family controls all of these locations they get bonuses for their family such as bullet proof vests which make them harder to kill or extra ammo. Each of these locations has a manager and some of them are usually guarded by a goon or ten. Killing the goons and shaking down the manager correctly, meaning don't be too easy on them and certainly don't throw them off a roof, lets the player take control of the business and start making money.
So that is how a player gets control of these properties and the bonuses that they provide. How a player accomplishes this is by going into Don's View, which is a 3d map of the city with these crime rings highlighted along with other important buildings such as police departments and banks. This view will show which family owns what and how many thugs and capos they have guarding the place. It's in this view that the game is most enjoyable, you can keep track of what properties you own, send your own personal thugs to attack or defend a place and plan your next wave of attack. Managing your personal friendly AI thugs, along with the money it takes to purchase new guards and equipment, the game has a nice element of strategy that is rarely found in 3rd person shooters.
Like I've mentioned a few times, there are a few hired goons that will be able follow the player around and assist in the criminal endeavors that will present themselves and throughout the game story you'll be able to give them promotions so that they become more productive mafia members. You can assign more and more skills to these people once they are promoted, such as safecracking and being an arsonist so that these fellows can help out taking over a place or netting some extra money. By the end of the game there will be one of them that will have most of the skills and another one that has the ones that are missing leaving the 3rd guy as a backup of sorts. So the game has a nice reward system in place outside of the main gameplay element of doing missions and killing off families. The reason one is going to keep playing the game will probably be that addictive nature and surely won't be the plot.
The story of The Godfather 2 videogame borrows heavily from the movie and makes its own concessions that, while may be necessary, can easily seen as butchering the source material. The changes made to the movie's plot aren't very good so it was a strange decision to take something that worked well and then bastardize it for the purpose of making a playable game out of it. The main character is nothing like the character Al Pacino played because of legal reasons but the rest of the cast is passable for what it's worth.
I wish I could say the plot missions are fun and exciting but they really aren't. The next reason to play the game is the finishing moves and the assassinations of the other families' family tree. The black hand finishers, which are the little executions started in the first game return here and the fact that some of them have to be used to kill rival family members is an added little treat. It's a strange treat though as sometimes an enemy mob member is shot, THEN falls off the roof but since he wasn't pushed off the roof he gets a short little siesta in a hospital bed then turns up a few moments later so he can be successfully pushed off a roof the next time. I guess a 3 story fall is survivable but some of these finishing moves are brutal shotgun shells to under a person's chin, no hospital visit would fix that, but hey. It's a game.
There's a little more music in this game which is a blessing. It's not The Godfather Radio of the first game which just plays The Godfather theme song over and over again. Also most of the voice cast is decent so I guess there's not much to complain about here.
A few other gripes could be made such as topless women sometimes walking around the street when they're supposed to only appear in the brothels but that is a minor complaint seeing as the poor AI, unoriginal missions and lazy story are easily the most glaring shortcomings. There is also the shameless DLC that accompanied the original and this game but I won't talk about that seeing as I just looked at what was offered, the price it was offered at and moved on.
In the end, The Godfather 3 will never see the light of day which is probably a great decision seeing as the 3rd movie was the weakest of the three. However it's a shame that something like the Don's View will probably never be seen outside of this subpar game.