1348 Ex Voto looks like a great game. On paper, the description of an Italian late medieval period, coupled with a young knight on a quest to rescue a loved one, sounds great. Standard fare that we’ve seen over the years, but it’s still intriguing enough to get your attention. Does 1348 Ex Voto actually deliver, though, is a question that needs answering.
And unfortunately, the answer to this is rather disappointing.
Story Overview – Aeta’s Quest to Find Bianca
In 1348 Ex Voto, players will take on the role of Aeta, a young knight errant who playfully duels with a girl named Bianca. Bianca, however, leaves your side for a little while, and while you’re out training, the nearby settlement that you both live in gets attacked. Aeta rushes to the village only to find it in ruins and under siege by numerous heavily armed soldiers. Bianca is nowhere to be seen, and it’s up to you to find her and rescue her.
A Strong First Impression That Quickly Fades
The game onboards you quite quickly and you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re in for an enjoyable adventure. The tutorial plays out fine and the game certainly looks great with gorgeous scenery and visuals in the background. However, don’t let this fool you. 1348 Ex Voto feels like an incredibly underbaked and unfinished game.
Combat Breakdown – Stance System With Frustrating Execution
Combat in 1348 Ex Voto involves attacking with your sword, blocking and parrying. You can attack either one-handed or two-handed and there’s a dual stance mechanic which sounds great. Other games make use of stances in a similar fashion so this isn’t exactly something groundbreaking and new. Unfortunately this is where the game tends to fall apart a bit.
Enemy Encounters and Difficulty Issues
Attacking enemies in 1348 Ex Voto involves some very precise parrying and attacking. Normal enemies feel like you can walk all over them but this quickly becomes very tedious and annoying once multiple enemies start to feature in battle. There’s also an early boss battle which becomes such a massive endeavour in frustration and annoyance that players will simply want to rage quit the game and never return.
Progression and Customisation Systems
As you progress throughout the game’s very short story you’ll be able to upgrade your character’s skills by investing in different skill trees. You’ll also come across Trinkets which you can equip which will have various effects on your character and their abilities.
Visuals, Audio, and World Design
1348 Ex Voto looks visually impressive but the game world is rather empty and devoid of life. The areas you travel are very linear and while the backgrounds and environments look good, they seem lifeless because you’re forced down specific paths and can’t really explore or see anything else going on. The voice acting in 1348 Ex Voto is fine with the characters sounding believable and the sound effects are not bad. Jennifer English voices Bianca and she’s delivered a great performance again as expected. Character facial animations while talking though seem incredibly strange sometimes and this really ruins cutscenes.
Combat and Gameplay Frustrations Revisited
Circling back to the combat again, 1348 Ex Voto would be an exponentially better game if the developers could rework the combat system and movement. As it stands right now, it feels incredibly lacklustre and the lock on mechanic will infuriate you as soon as multiple enemies show up. Aeta is able to recover by eating food but when you’re taking damage from multiple enemies or a boss fight, this isn’t going to help you much. It’s even more annoying when the dodge mechanic feels as if you need to press the button with lightning speed reflexes just to get the timing right.
Technical Problems and Bugs
Unfortunately, the game also suffers from a massive amount of bugs and technical issues. In fact, while typing up this review, I tried launching the game to screenshot something and I couldn’t even load into my save because it instantly crashed the game each time I tried. Bye bye progress I guess? There’s been two patches so far but the game definitely needs more to fix it.
Missing Features and Quality of Life Issues
Another big problem is the lack of a map and visual cues as to what can be interacted with or explored. Since the entire game is quite linear though, you should be able to get through areas but it’s still baffling to me how a map doesn’t exist and how easy it is to miss things while traversing the various regions in the game. Oh and you can’t remap controller buttons either so you’re stuck with using the options given to you.
Final Verdict
1348 Ex Voto is a game that had some good ideas with a stance-based combat system and an interesting medieval Italian setting. However, the execution here is incredibly poor and it feels as if you’re walking between two places and fighting a few enemies before doing the exact same thing again with added frustration and annoyance the second the enemy numbers ramp up. Boss battles are infuriatingly difficult and the game is just simply not fun at all to play because it’s fighting you back with its mediocre mechanics and unpolished gameplay.
This feels like a title that needs at least 6 months more development time and an extensive overhaul to make it succeed. Quite a disappointment really because the story did sound compelling but ultimately was a wasted opportunity too.
1348 Ex Voto Trailer
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The game was provided to us for the express purpose of reviewing.
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