Rhapsody in Scarlet, Konami’s new action game revealed during today’s State of Play and State of Play Japan, looks rather interesting to me, and it almost feels like something out of the PlayStation 2 era. It’s set in 1920s New York, where an unseen conflict is playing out among people who practice magic in secret, and it stars Ellie Myers, a young magus who came to the city to become a jazz singer and instead ends up wielding magic and commanding beasts in combo-driven fights. The PlayStation Blog post is framed as a PlayStation 5 announcement, but Konami has since confirmed the game is also coming to XBOX Series X|S and PC via Steam.
Konami co-producer Takanori Murayama says the team wanted something different from the weapon-based close-quarters combat most action games lean on, so the fights are built around highly customizable combos that string together close- and long-range attacks, area-of-effect spells, and beast techniques. Ellie fights alongside her beast companion, Sköll, channeling the powers of beasts and magic into combined attacks, and Konami is pitching the process of finding combos that fit your playstyle and adapting them to different enemies as one of the game’s core appeals.
The story trailer, which debuted during State of Play Japan rather than the main broadcast, fills in the setup. After a certain incident pulls Ellie into the schemes of a mysterious mafia organization, she meets Ilya Jones, the young leader of a magus organization called the Seekers, who was raised by her father Harold, the head of the Sorcellerie Quarter. Ellie values freedom above all else and refuses to be bound by rules or authority, Ilya values order above all else, and Konami says the two clash repeatedly before their bond deepens through fighting together, eventually landing them in front of a fate that threatens the balance of the world. Cherami Leigh voices Ellie in English with Akari Kito in Japanese, and Hannah Grace voices Ilya in English with Saori Onishi in Japanese.
Konami says it went to some lengths on the setting, with on-site research and historical references feeding into the architecture, fashion, cars, and Prohibition-era speakeasies, and it points to the rapid spread of automobiles and radios and the growing presence of women in society as the texture it wanted to capture. The fantasy layer of Beasts, magic, and a magical district sits on top of that, and the soundtrack is built on jazz inspired by the sounds of the 1920s.
Konami hasn’t attached a release window to any of the three platforms yet, but Rhapsody in Scarlet is available to wishlist on the PlayStation Store now, and it was also on the docket for today’s Konami Press Start stream, which was scheduled for 8:00 AM Pacific (11:00 AM Eastern) on Konami’s YouTube channel.
