I really wanted to love what Sedleo tried to do here. Dropping a medieval action-adventure game into 14th-century Italy during the Black Death is a fantastic hook. You play as Aeta, a young knight errant who vows to rescue her friend Bianca from a group of violent brigands. The setting is grim, the stakes are deeply personal, and for a few hours, the world pulls you right in.
But does 1348 Ex Voto justify its $25 price tag? Unfortunately, no. The entire experience is dragged down by a fundamentally broken combat routine and severe technical issues on the PlayStation 5. The voice acting and art direction try incredibly hard to save the package. They just cannot overcome gameplay that actively fights against you.
A Story That Falls Apart After the First Act
The opening hour sets up something special. Aeta and Bianca share a genuine connection, brought to life by excellent performances from Alby Baldwin and Jennifer English. Aeta presents herself in a more masculine way to survive the patriarchal rules of the era, and the story uses this to explore the harsh realities women faced during that time. When brigands attack their village and take Bianca, Aeta’s vow to get her back carries real weight.
Then the plot loses its way. The tight, character-driven focus of the first act gets swapped out for a messy narrative about classism and social injustice. The villains you run into later are badly written and rely on tired one-liners. There is even a massive twist near the end that makes the first half of the story make zero sense in hindsight. You start the game caring deeply about the rescue mission. By the time the credits roll six to eight hours later, that emotional hook is completely gone.
Beautiful Landscapes Hiding Linear Corridors
When you aren’t fighting, you spend your time walking through the Italian countryside. Built in Unreal Engine 5, the rolling hills, vineyards, and plague-ravaged ruins look fantastic. White crosses painted on doors and the occasional dead horse give the world a genuinely bleak atmosphere.
Exploration is mostly linear. You walk down narrow paths with the occasional small fork hiding collectibles. You gather paper scrolls to unlock skill points and find sword components like pommels and grips to upgrade your weapon. You also discover trinkets that offer specific buffs. One trinket, the Charge Attack Instant Kill, completely breaks the difficulty scaling. Once I equipped it, most regular encounters turned into a joke. Food is scattered around the world to heal you, and you can consume it instantly mid-fight to save yourself from a game over.
Swords, Stances, and a Broken Camera
Combat is where 1348 Ex Voto completely falls flat. The developers worked with Historical European Martial Arts experts for the motion capture, and the two-handed and one-handed sword stances look incredibly authentic. You wear down an enemy’s guard gauge to stagger them, then deal actual damage.
The problem is the lock-on targeting. It is a complete disaster. The camera automatically locks onto a target, but it frequently snaps to the wrong person mid-combo. I had multiple fights where I was attacking a brigand right in front of me, only for the camera to violently yank my focus to an enemy standing on a ledge above who wasn’t even in the fight yet. Your attack chain resets, the enemy you were hitting gets their stagger bar back, and you take a free hit.
The dodge button is completely unreliable. Enemy attacks will frequently home in on you mid-dodge. Boss fights are even worse. Bosses rapidly regenerate their health if you stop attacking them. Since the dodge does not work and the camera refuses to look at the right target, you end up mashing buttons just trying to survive. To make matters worse, there are only about three regular enemy types in the entire game. You just fight the same guys wearing different coloured shirts over and over.
Visual Highs and Technical Lows
The environments hold their own against much bigger games, but the character models do not. During cutscenes, the faces look strangely artificial, and the lip-syncing rarely matches the dialogue. I also noticed severe clipping issues where Aeta’s clothes would constantly pass right through her armour.
The PlayStation 5 version is locked at 30 frames per second, even if you play on a PS5 Pro. The frame rate still drops wildly during busy moments. The audio mix is just as erratic. During several boss encounters, the music and sound effects dropped to a whisper, only to spike back to maximum volume the second the fight ended. I also ran into several bugs where Aeta simply refused to draw her sword or jump over a small crate until I reloaded my save file.
1348 Ex Voto Wastes a Fascinating Setting
Sedleo took a massive swing with their debut project. Trying to build a 14th-century Italian adventure on an indie budget and chasing the tone of games from Ninja Theory or Asobo Studio is a huge undertaking. Parts of that effort actually succeed. The plague-ravaged Italian countryside is genuinely beautiful to look at, and the voice cast gives performances that belong in a much bigger release.
But a video game has to be played. You can’t build an eight-hour experience almost entirely around sword fights and then leave the controls in this state. The erratic lock-on camera, unreliable dodging, and repetitive enemy encounters turn what should be a great historical revenge story into a constant source of frustration. I wanted to see Aeta’s journey through to the end just to see how her vow to Bianca resolved. Instead, the game threw every possible technical hurdle in my way to stop me from enjoying the trip.
Even at a lower twenty-five dollar asking price, it’s impossible to recommend spending your money here. If you’re absolutely desperate for a medieval adventure, wait for a deep discount. Just go in knowing you’ll be fighting the software itself just as often as you fight the brigands.
1348 Ex Voto
Summary
1348 Ex Voto wastes a fantastic setting and excellent voice acting on a fundamentally broken gameplay loop. The 14th-century Italian countryside looks gorgeous, but the erratic lock-on camera, unreliable dodging, and technical bugs turn sword fights into a constant struggle. Even at a budget price, it’s hard to recommend picking this up until the controls see some major updates.
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