1348 Ex Voto

My first few hours with 1348 Ex Voto felt like discovering a hand-addressed letter inside a mass-produced book: something personal, a little fragile, obviously made with love. Sedleo is a small Italian studio making their debut, and the care they poured into the setting radiates from every Apennine hillside and crumbling Roman ruin. The game follows Aeta, a young knight-errant voiced with real conviction by Alby Baldwin, as she makes a sacred vow to find her kidnapped companion Bianca (played by Jennifer English, quietly excellent) across nine chapters of plague-ravaged 14th-century Italy. The title itself is worth sitting with: an ex voto is a devotional offering made in fulfilment of a vow. The game knows what it wants to be about. Whether it gets there is the complicated part. The combat draws from Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), and the concept is genuinely interesting. Aeta switches between a one-handed stance for faster, more mobile strikes and a two-handed stance for heavier, guard-breaking power, with parries, blocks, and stamina-based stagger sitting at the heart of every encounter. The animations were captured with trained martial artists, and in brief moments the swordplay has real weight to it. Sword components like pommels and blades can be swapped out via parts found in the world, and scrolls collected during exploration unlock new abilities through a skill tree. On paper, it is a small but coherent system. In practice, the lock-on mechanic swings erratically between targets, the dodge timing is inconsistent enough to feel punishing rather than demanding, and boss encounters lean on a regenerating health mechanic that quickly turns fights into attrition slogs. The combat wanted to be the game's heartbeat. It ends up more like an irregular pulse. Outside of combat, the structure is refreshingly honest about what it is: a linear corridor through beautiful spaces, with light environmental puzzles, hidden food items for healing, and sword upgrades tucked into secret nooks. The world is sparse on NPCs, which reads as intentional given the plague backdrop, but the emptiness occasionally tips over into barrenness. Aeta monologues frequently, and not always with the restraint the atmosphere deserves. The narrative threads involving women's agency in medieval society are genuinely interesting thematic territory, introduced early and never quite followed through to a satisfying place. The story's jumps in logic and tone have frustrated more than a few reviewers, and the facial animations during cutscenes carry an uncanniness that the voice cast has to work against. On PC specifically: performance is a real concern. Frame rate instability and stuttering are consistent complaints at launch, even on machines comfortably above spec, and mouse sensitivity options are absent from the settings menu. The autosave placement has left players replaying significant chunks of content after deaths in poorly bracketed encounters. PS5 reports are more forgiving on the technical side. If you have the option, that may currently be the more stable path through Aeta's Italy. Here is the thing though. There is a game in here that clearly deserves to exist. The orchestral score and the visual commitment to a specific, rarely depicted historical moment carry genuine craft. Alby Baldwin's performance gives Aeta a stubbornness worth following. The ex voto premise is a quiet, beautiful idea for a quest structure. Sedleo aimed for something in the company of A Plague Tale and Hellblade, and the reach, if not the grasp, is visible throughout. For players who can tolerate rough edges and have patience for a game that knows what it is trying to say even when it cannot always say it cleanly, there is something real here worth meeting halfway.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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