Liked the first two quite a lot, but the third one didn't have a good reputation, so I have skipped it. With a fourth one reportedly in development it might be a good time to check the third one out.
Does it run well? It had a bad rep for having technical issues, but it got a bunch of patches and a remaster later. Story, characters, gameplay? Anything woke?
I actually tried and the game forced me to murder bank guards right away. Including inviting me to burn alive the first one, and there's not even knocking out people on stealth (and I've been finally playing MGSV around that time), just killing them. Found it really obnoxious, because:
The previous Mafia games I could actually play as a good guy mobster. Don't murder civs (don't even run them over), don't murder the cops too. In the first one I got in a shootout with the cops only when a corrupt bunch (like 2 carloads) accompanied the mob to my hideout to murder me when I was defecting to the FBI (and in the sequel you eventually will murder the first game's protag living under witness protection program). The second one had an awkward (for me) moment very early on when there's a shootout with the Micks and then the intervening cops and then everyone celebrated like if a great thing just happened. (Besides my moralfagging, killing a cop is actually a huge thing in organized crime because the police will be hellbent to get you as a copkiller. Look what happened to the likes of the Bonnie & Clyde gang, who weren't really "organized" but just a band of well, bandits.)
This is also what I liked in the True Crimes games and Sleeping Dragons. Didn't really play Yakuza games but these obviously count maybe even more.
I also just realized I wrote "actually" at least 3 times.
Thanks, I also often try to play a good guy. In the Metro games I always sneak buy and at least do not kill - do not even knock out if possible - the footsoldiers of the Fascists or the Communists. Those people might not even understand what they are a part of, or not have a choice. Bandits, on the other hand I always kill. They know what they are a part of, and chose to be that way.
This is kind of like what you described above.
In gangster games I try to be like Tom in Miller's Crossing (https://youtu.be/5P7FdpluO7U).