Set in post-WWII New York City, The Godfather: The Game follows the player-created character's rise through a crime syndicate based on the book and film franchises. Combining events from the movie with side-story missions, the player must earn respect by completing missions in territories controlled by New York's five crime families.

Largely open-ended, the game's story is driven by a series of missions where the player can use violence, intimidation, or diplomacy to affect the outcome and influence future events and other character's reactions. A third-person action game, The Godfather: The Game features a punching mechanism to brutally assert yourself, a car theft and driving engine, and a shooting system which allows for locational damage.

The game features a persistent offline world populated with locations from the franchise and characters who are often voiced by the actors who portrayed them onscreen.