1348 Ex Voto's stylish sword fighting and strong premise caught my attention, but the game's awful PC performance tainted the experience

When I first heard about 1348 Ex Voto, I was instantly intrigued. A medieval Italian setting, sword fights, a dark and dramatic quest with a knight at the centre of it; and a lady knight at that? Count me in!

In developer Sedleo's third-person action game set during 14th-century Italy, you play as Aeta, a young nobleman's daughter and trained knight-errant, who is dealing with the loss of her father after pestilence swept through her village.

When the rest of her hometown is massacred by unknown forces and Bianca, her closest companion and former household servant, is suddenly kidnapped, it's up to Aeta, armed with her determination and skill with a longsword, to come to the rescue.

A true knight

I'm a sucker for a dark tale that follows a character on a high-stakes quest, so the premise of Ex Voto had my attention immediately from the prologue. It's a classic narrative about whether the end can ever justifies the means, and Aeta's unfailing resolve and heroism, as well as her naivety, make for a compelling character amid a setting filled with lawlessness.

The game consists of nine relatively short chapters that take place across rocky landscapes, lush woodland, the ruins of ancient Rome, and the villas of a medieval Italian countryside. I finished it in roughly seven hours, but it's possible to beat it within one sitting if you don't die too often or spend the extra time scouring every corner looking for hidden treasures.

As childhood companions (and later suggested to be lovers), Aeta, played by Alby Baldwin, has an unwavering devotion to Jennifer English's Bianca, so her vow to track down and rescue her from her captors was a journey I was prepared to fall in love with.

As the playable protagonist, I did like Aeta for the most part. Throughout her quest, she is forced into encounters that test her faith, and you witness how resilient she becomes in not just tracking down Bianca but also finding those responsible for all this destruction.

Heroes like Aeta, who are defined by their selflessness and driven by a strong moral code, are some of my favorite characters in fiction, especially in stories with a woman in the lead role.

Aeta is shaped by the chivalric tales she grew up with, which inspired her to become a knight-errant in the first place, but due to how short the game is, there weren't enough opportunities to dig deeper into her character beyond the vow she made to her god and devotion to Bianca, which felt like a missed opportunity.

Additionally, Ex Voto suffers from too much telling, and not enough showing. The simple premise of the game and Aeta's arduous quest should be strong enough to stand on its own, but her unnecessary commentary just becomes irritating.

I don't typically mind when protagonists have an internal monologue, but it gets to a point. In Ex Voto, instead of simply letting the lovely linear environments tell the story, Aeta often comments on literally everything she sees: whether it be pointing out the obvious, repeating her latest point of interest, or the countless times she proclaims her vow to save Bianca.

The latter is also one of the reasons why I wasn't completely sold on Aeta and Bianca's story. Aside from the short prologue and a few other scenes I won't spoil, the closeness they share just didn't feel real enough to grasp onto. Aeta wants to save Bianca; that's her main goal, but the journey lacks the emotional depth that I expected.

Baldwin and English's great voice work does most of the heavy lifting in trying to make their bond believable, but their underdeveloped relationship couldn't make me to care too deeply. It's a shame, because these sorts of love stories are a dime a dozen in video games, and it wasn't helped by the disjointed story beats, particularly mid-game.

Each chapter tasks you with getting from one area to the next, on the trail of Bianca and her captors, followed by a short time skip that begins the proceeding chapter. This is a short, linear experience, so there's not much in terms of exploration; you'll mainly be stocking up on provisions, finding trinkets, treasures, and sword parts, or moving boxes or carts to overcome obstacles. And taking down baddies, of course.

Without spoiling anything, I will admit the final act took me by surprise but, because the exploration of Aeta and Bianca's bond felt so underutilized within the story, the climax rang hollow.

Performance woes

Now let's get the worst of it out of the way. I played 1348 Ex Voto on PC and let's just say I was sorely disappointed in the optimization.

My PC is fitted with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card, an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-core CPU, and 16GB of RAM, and with this mid-range build, I can typically play some pretty demanding modern games. However, the small indieEx Voto struggled tremendously.

When at high settings at 1440p resolution (though I tried 4K too), locked at 60 frames per second (fps), the game's performance dropped to between 20 and 30fps and stuttering was prevalent, with the same problems persisting even at medium settings.

After fiddling with settings for ages, I eventually resorted to putting the game in low settings and saw a big boost in performance up to 60fps, although the game frequently saw huge dips down to 30fps, especially in areas featuring an overwhelming amount of detail on screen, like in highly detailed woodland or places featuring atmospheric shadows.

Aeta and other characters also suffer the same fate. With all low settings, the realism and emotional weight that are intended to be translated through their models are lost, making them look like puppets, and I would be lying if I didn't say it put me off.

It's a bummer, because the game's realistic style and appealing, cinematic direction were one of the things that drew me in in the first place. I was essentially forced to sacrifice the gorgeous visuals if I wanted even a crumb of good performance, and even then, it wasn't always perfect.

While less frustrating, I did run into a few annoying bugs, though they weren't game-breaking enough to require me winding back my save. At one point early on, I encountered an awful, yet hilarious issues where a character kept repeating his lines over and over again during a lengthy cutscene. It was so distracting that I couldn't even pay attention to any of the dialogue, and it basically ruined the atmosphere of the entire scene.

Aside from this, and a few other interaction bugs where I couldn't pick up provisions and move a box properly, the main issue revolved around the performance, and I think the game should've been kept in the oven a little longer so Sedleo could smooth out the cracks.

During the review period, I wasn't given the chance to try out the PlayStation 5 version, so I'm really curious if Ex Voto offers a more stable experience than PC.

Stick 'em with the pointy end

Ex Voto's saving grace is its sword-fighting combat system. Your sole weapon is your longsword, which gives you a one-handed and two-handed stance. The first lets Aeta attack faster in broad strokes, but strikes deal slightly less damage, while the latter attacks slower, with a shorter range, and deals slightly more damage.

One-on-one battles is definitely the game's strongest suit; sword fights feel stylish and rewarding, particularly when you're able to repeatedly execute perfect parries and stagger an enemy by breaking their guard, leaving them open for a killing blow.

Aeta's longsword can also be upgraded by finding different parts along your journey, each with its own attributes that offer alternative fighting styles. The game's skill tree, which consists of four key categories and can be unlocked by finding scrolls in the world, also features additional ways to upgrade your Health, Guard, and Food gauges (which are vital in longer battles) as well as your two stances.

Trinkets are another special item that, when equipped, will impact gameplay with unique effects. Each trinket has a cost, so you can't equip them all, but they do make or break a fight.

You start with the Toy Knight, a trinket that automatically uses all the food in your inventory to prevent death, but you can find a handful more, including one that lets you heal for double, which comes in handy in the latter part of the game when you're up against numerous enemies at once.

Speaking of, Ex Voto has a good variety of foes, along with three main bosses, across its nine chapters, all with their own weapon types and attack patterns that you'll need to learn how to counter by parrying and spending scrolls on the right skills.

There are points in combat where you are overwhelmed by multiple enemies at once, and, in the late game, additional foes spawn out of nowhere to join the fight making maintaining your gauges an even bigger challenge.

These five-on-one (even sometimes more) fights could sometimes feel finicky due to the game's lock-on mechanic, especially when you are pinned in close quarters. If you don't do a good enough job of collecting provisions, you may get soft-locked into fights when you die because of the autosave function.

While I enjoy combat a lot, there is no power scaling in the game so by the time I reached the final boss fight, I'd become so accustomed to the simple mechanics that I was able to beat them easily.

Just as it got in the way of being able to enjoy the visuals, the game's performance also affects gameplay. Not to the extent where it is unplayable, but stutters and small framerate dips are more noticeable in the aforementioned areas when so much is happening on screen.

Should you play 1348 Ex Voto?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

1348 Ex Voto suffers from a lack of accessibility options, only offering general graphics settings for motion blur and subtitles, and multiple language options. There are also no options to customize your keybinds on PC, which was something I struggled with.

How I reviewed 1348 Ex Voto

I spent roughly eight hours playing 1348 Ex Voto on my gaming PC with my Logitech G G715 wireless gaming keyboard and Logitech G703 wireless gaming mouse, completing the main storyline. I used a Gigabyte M32U gaming monitor, and used my Sony WH-CH520 wireless headphones for audio.

The game doesn't offer any additional performance modes to try out, but I compared the game's visuals and performance to other medieval action games, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

First reviewed March 2026