Adapted from an in-progress Steam review
My first impression, after not quite two hours of gameplay, is that 1348 Ex Voto is nowhere near as bad as the harshest critics say it is, yet still an absolute hot mess of indie jank and understandable, but unfortunate, design decisions.
I’m long past the tutorial and still cannot make heads or tails of the combat. The timing for parrying and dodging seems to be razor-thin and isn’t clear from the animations, and once you get hit you enter a kind of death spiral where you’re wide open and the enemy presses their attacks. Spamming attack seems to work better than any sort of strategy. Normally I’d be hesitant to blame this on the game- my usual bread and butter is first-person shooters and turn-based RPGs- but I’m not the only one bringing up these issues.
It doesn’t help that, in general, the game is very bad at actually explaining, well, anything. You’re kind of just left to fend for yourself with the upgrade mechanics, and I still have no idea what an Ex Voto is.
It is missing quality of life features that some jam games have. No difficulty adjustments. No configurable controls. No way to replay a chapter. Three save slots. I know it’s a small team trying to punch above their weight class, but I expect better than this from a game that costs actual money in 2026.
It also runs terribly. I suspect it’s the usual culprit of computationally expensive techniques that don’t translate to obvious gains in fidelity. The environments are beautiful, but the character models aren’t to the same level and there’s very little variety in them. I honestly think it would have been a smarter move to not compete on graphics at all, and shoot for something that’s visually consistent and runs well even if it would have looked dated.
It’s not all bad. There are times when everything clicks, occasions where it works, moments where it shines. The prologue, despite some wooden animations and hilariously broken hair physics, is quite enjoyable and introduces the world, the characters, and the mechanics succinctly and efficiently. When you land a hit, there’s a really satisfying impact to it. Wandering through the Italian countryside, running across little details and hearing little snippets from Aeta could have made a wonderful atmospheric walking simulator by itself.
My biggest complaint at the moment isn’t that it’s janky- I can live with that- it’s that it’s frustrating. There are a lot of issues, but I can overlook most of them on an indie title with a unique charm, except for the clunky, punishing combat.