1348 Ex Voto

The Middle Ages in Europe were a brutal time for most people. Unless you were at the very top of the social hierarchy, among the nobility, kings or the Pope, life was generally short, hard and often quite unpleasant. It didn't exactly get any better with the plague regularly sweeping across the continent in waves, leaving entire villages deserted. The most famous of these, the Black Death, arrived in 1347 in the Sicilian port city of Messina, after which the disease spread like wildfire through Italy and later the rest of Europe. In many Italian cities, between 40 and 80 per cent of the population died, and when the epidemic finally subsided, historians estimate that around a third of Europe's population had died.

So it's not exactly a pleasant period in history, but that's precisely why it's actually quite obvious to use it as the setting for a game. And that's exactly what developer Sedleo has done with 1348: Ex Voto, published by Dear Villagers and released today, 12 March, for PC and PlayStation 5.

In 1348: Ex Voto, you play as the female knight Aeta, whom we meet in the game's first scene together with her friend Bianca. Bianca is actually a nun, but despite her vows, she teaches Aeta sword fighting. Already here, the game begins to establish its theme, as the dialogue revolves around how difficult it is to be a woman in this period and how few opportunities women had in practice to make their own decisions about their lives. As a history teacher, I can't help but think that this is actually a rather interesting angle, because it's not something you see every day in history books. Whether it is gender-based, hierarchical or through another narrative angle, it is always welcome to see games trying to tell stories from other angles, and Sedleo has found one here that really works.

Shortly after this introduction, the town where the two are staying is attacked. Church bells ring, smoke rises above the rooftops, and amid the chaos, Bianca is kidnapped by a group of thugs. Aeta then makes a vow, a so-called "ex voto", to find their friend again. This is where the game's title comes from, and it is also the starting point for the rest of the story. From here, Aeta embarks on a journey through the Italian countryside in search of Bianca. The game has a very linear structure, so you move through levels where the structure is almost always the same. You run a short distance, encounter a small group of enemies, defeat them, and continue on to the next area. If you lose, you are sent back to a checkpoint, which is sometimes quite far back in the level.

I don't mind linearity - it can be a useful tool for delimiting, but elements such as pacing and set design must be able to compensate for the lack of freedom. Unfortunately, this is not always the case here. The game quickly starts to feel a bit monotonous. Not least because the variation among the enemies is quite limited. In a given chapter, which may take half an hour to complete if you fight all enemies, you often end up fighting only about ten to twelve opponents in total. That's not very many, and when they behave quite similarly, the fights quickly start to resemble each other.

The combat system is simple in principle. You have to time your attacks correctly, parry your enemy's blows and strike when an opening arises. This means that you quickly learn your enemies' patterns, which is also the intention. For example, a peasant with a pitchfork will almost always stab twice and then make a longer forward attack, and that's when you have to strike back. The problem is that when enemies only have two or three variations in their attacks, the fights quickly start to feel like something you have to memorise rather than something you react to.

The boss fights are some of the places where the game's design really starts to feel frustrating. They work in the same way as the regular fights, just with longer patterns and harsher penalties if you make mistakes. You have to constantly wait for the right timing, parry at exactly the right moment and strike again in a short window. This means that you are never really allowed to just fight freely or use more creative attacks. Instead, it becomes an exercise in memorising the boss's patterns, and when you finally win, it feels more like something you have figured out than something you have fought for.

The game also doesn't explain its systems very well. One example is the game's skill system, which I only discovered by accident when I was in the menu adjusting some graphics settings. Here, it suddenly became apparent that you could upgrade your sword and unlock various abilities, but the game had never indicated that the system existed at all. It's not a dealbreaker, but it is a slightly annoying sign that Sedleo may have bitten off more than it can chew at times.

And then there are all the mistakes.

One of the first things I noticed was how limited the game's settings menu is. I played with a mouse and keyboard, and the mouse sensitivity was extremely high. Even the slightest movements felt like the camera was turning halfway around. My mouse is already set to the lowest sensitivity I normally use, so there wasn't much I could do about it. The game simply does not offer any option to adjust the mouse sensitivity, so you have to live with it.

In addition, there is no option to change the font size in the game's menus or text boxes. This means that if you are sitting a distance away from the screen or playing on a larger, high-resolution screen, it can actually be quite difficult to read some of the text.
The graphics settings are also not very extensive. You can adjust the most common things like bloom and anti-aliasing, but there are no frame generation or ray tracing options. That in itself would not be a big problem if the game looked fantastic, but unfortunately it does not.

The landscapes can actually be quite beautiful, but the character models often look strange. Many of them have a yellowish skin tone and a sickly appearance, which almost makes it seem as if they are all suffering from jaundice. This could be a deliberate style choice to emphasise the presence of the plague, but I'm not entirely convinced that this is the intention. It's clear that the developers have used motion capture for some of the cutscenes, as the facial expressions are actually quite good. However, the textures are often rough, which makes the overall impression rather uneven.

All in all, I must admit that I didn't really enjoy 1348: Ex Voto. The game often feels as if it is actively working against the player, rather than inviting them into the experience. The lack of settings, the uneven sound balance and the rather monotonous gameplay make it all feel more frustrating than engaging.

It's a shame, really, because the period is interesting, and the idea of following a female knight through plague-ridden Italy could easily have been the starting point for something really exciting. But in its current form, 1348: Ex Voto is difficult to recommend. Perhaps some patches could improve the experience in the long run, but as the game stands right now, I simply didn't have much fun with it.