Moon Knight, Age of Anubis

YOU become an Egyptologist assisting the super-hero Moon Night.

Working at a museum, of course you always fantasized that a mummy would wake up and start raising trouble. Don’t we all? But then one night it happens, and it’s a lot less cool than it sounded.

Fortunately, Moon Knight appears to save the day and it’s a good thing: N’Kantu was not just any old pharaoh, but was a pretty evil wizard back before he rose from four millennia of death, and it seems he has something really nasty in mind for New York City.

And for some reason, Khonshu tells Moon Knight to take you with him to help in the fight. Nobody is sure why, even in universe. If you live long enough to face N’Kantu and Anubi maybe you’ll find out.

Now get out there and survive the zombie hordes that were once the people of New York!

Review and Opinion

Not great. Not even fun.

The combat system is similar to the other Marvel Multiverse Missions, which is both good and bad. It’s not complicated: a simple roll such as “roll two dice, add your strength, is it 14 or more?” But it has a significant problem: winning a fight often rewards with a stat boost and losing penalizes with a stat loss. Which of course means that the whole game is a spiral of failure – if you didn’t succeed when your Might was 4, what are your odds when it’s 3? The death spiral aside, the overall difficulty of the fights here is totally wrong. We played over 20 times, and were never able to fairly beat the Times Square gauntlet. If you have the ankh then losing is okay, but still penalizes you into a condition where you’ll never win again. We finally decided that on page 10, a beam of moonlight heals any stat under 3 back up to 3 just so the game is playable. But that doesn’t last long since 2d6 + 3 will never equal 17.

The Moon Knight book in particular also has a spiral of Unlocked, which is MK’s out-of-control nature of thinking with fists. As it goes up, you lose the ability to talk to people and instead fight them. This means you miss items and benefits, and eventually you will be dumped into a fight you cannot win. It feels as though it could be character development as you “specialize” into one of your keywords – except that none of the other keywords have this spiral built in, only the one that costs you the game.

I’m a big fan of Jonathan Green’s writing generally. I have all of his ACE game books and I just received The Shadow Over Arkham in the post yesterday. But this is not his finest, and is kind of an unplayable mess. Eventually we just gave up and mapped it out, so I can put it back on the shelf and get on with a better book.

Hints and Tips

Unlike the first two Marvel Multiverse books, there are only a few keywords that seem single-use or throw-away such as indicating that you found the keycard. Several of the keywords follow a general theme, and affect your gameplay in subtle ways such as forcing you to pick a fight or affecting your chances of success. The keywords aren’t explicitly described, but here’s my understanding of what I consider the more important and recurrent of them.

Unlocked = Losing control over anger, picking fights. Can cause you to pick fights automatically, or to be too rough and thereby incur other effects,
Eclipsed = Subtlety, stealth, cowardice.
Hunted = Allies are helping the hunt for N’Kantu. Generally good, as it means more help is out there.
Feared = Bad reputation, e.g. with NYPD. Affects others’ reactions to MK.
Awed = Overwhelmed by the awesomeness of everything. Tends to be a penalty on mental checks.
Granted = Backstory, MK’s history and people.
In the Heights = Growing fear of heights. Can act as a penalty in a few cases.
Knighted = High tech stuff such as drones and computers. Can get stuff done or bypass fights.
Who Let the Dogs Out = Connecting Anubis to the situation.
Abracadabra = Magical knowledge.
Happy Halloween = Knowledge of magical creatures.

There are four secret entries:

One = Page 212. Praying to Khonshu and being directed to the zoo and also getting +Mystic. I couldn’t find any link or hints from 296 or 236 or other places where we’re trying to decide where to go. No idea how one would guess it.
Two = Page 100. From the limo ride on 170, adding the streets gets you here where you encounter the Gray Gargoyle and maybe get a vial of serum.
Three = Page 177. The address of Doctor Strange’s place on 267. Gives +Mystic +Might +Mind for noticing that you’re already at his house.
Four = Page 60. From page 97 the entrance to the Temple of Seth, there are 60 pillars.Gives+2 Secret Knowledge.

Errors

After the fight with Jack (103) you gain or lose Might depending on the fight. If you lost, you then turn to 30 where you take an additional penalty for losing. Yes, an unfortunate roll can mean -3 Might!

The fight on page 219and also the fight on page 68, there are multiple rounds but it”s only the last round that matters and the earlier rounds don’t affect that at all.