Warcraft III Map: Touhou Defence of the Shrine

Touhou Project is a series of 2D vertical-scrolling shooting game made by Team Shanghai Alice, and some spin-off games made from collaboration with Twilight Frontier. Despite being just a 2D shooting game (like Space Impact, my friends said), the difficulty is awesomely making my eyes burning. The bullets are spread through the whole screen based on some unique-yet-deadly pattern, often called "Danmaku" (lit. means Bullet Hell). Here's the example of one Spell Card, the pattern executed by each boss on every stage in the game.

Divine Punishment "Young Demon Lord" by Remilia Scarlet

Because of weird magic of internet and such, many fans were gathered and created their own fandom, like pictures, fan-made stories, music arrangement, doujinshi games, and many others. One creation is this custom Warcraft III Map named Touhou Defence of the Shrines.

Touhou Defence of the Shrines - Loading Screen

CHARACTER REFERENCES
Basically, it's a spin-off map from the popular Defence of the Ancients maps, like many other maps that is similar to it. This map includes Touhou characters from TH06 to TH12.8 with some extras from non-game reference: Tokiko (from Print works: Touhou Kourindou) and Renko Usami (from Music CDs).

This map also had some unique features that is different from the original DotA maps. Let's have a look by playing it ^^

Character Select Window

CHARACTER SELECT

The character select window is quite different. It shows the 2 faction of girls: Hakurei (Left) and Moriya (Right). Let's just say it Sentinel and Scourge in DotA, which player can choose both when choosing "All Pick" in game mode selection. When the player click a character, it shows the description of the clicked character:

Title - title based on the Touhou game referenced

Name - name of the character

Role - there are many types of role, like Tanker (lots of health, not easy to die), Mage (lots of mana, expert on skill spamming), DPS (Damage per Second - likes to hit a lot), and many others.

Ranged/Melee - type of normal attack

Main Attributes - primary attributes. For frequent players of Warcraft III should know this thing.

Difficulty (yet I don't know why it is always empty).

Let's just say I pick Aya Shameimaru this time.

Home Base - Hakurei Faction

HOME BASE
In the home base (fountain), it's basically the same with all spin-off maps of DotA. There are 3 kinds of shop, the ingredient shop (stat items, armor, weapon, etc), consumable shop (potions, teleport ticket, etc), and recipe shop (combine some items to make it one and stronger!). When you first play it, you might be confused to which shop sell what items.

From the picture, 4 shops on the bottom left are the ingredient shops, 1 shop on the bottom right is the consumable shop), and the upper shops are recipe shops (there are so many of them which I'm too lazy to check them all).

SKILL SET

For the skills, it's quite unique, too. Most skills are stat-based, like the one above. So if the Agi stat increases, the magic damage will also increase. And the shortcut placement is good enough. It goes from D-F-R-W key for all skill 1-2-3-Ultimate (with C or E key for additional skills). Quite convenient, isn't it?

(Note: this doesn't apply to Patchouli Knowledge since her skill set depends on which elements used in the beginning of the game, so it's not fixed.)

RESOURCES

Power power-ups (red items) were dropped on upper-left of the screen.

On the upper screen, there are 3 symbols:

Point - Used for purchasing items and reviving self. Received from killing creeps, heroes, and periodic income, and power-up.

Faith - Used for weather control, reviving self, and tower action. Received from killing heroes and periodic income. Maximum amount of 100.

Power - Used for increasing primary attribute. Received from power-up. Half of the amount is lost and some of it is dropped on death. Maximum amount of 30.

Maybe some of you wondering what's this "power-up" thing for Point and Power. Well, they're like a floating icon that have a possibility to drop when creeps die. It's crucial on giving advantage in early game.

UNIQUE TOWER SYSTEM

Tower actions available on Hakurei's tower

There is a unique system on towers. Unlike uncontrollable tower on DotA, in DotS you can make the tower execute some skill, for recovering and aid the allies. Special for main tower (the one/s before the main base), player can summon super creep for one lane only. Moreover, Faith is also used in the main base of each faction to activate invincible armor on all allied structures, like in DotA.

For Hakurei:
Devour - Recovers tower's health. Recover faster when enemy creep is nearby.
Defence Border - Boosts nearby allies' defense.
Summon - 100 faith for Genji's apparition for one lane.

For Moriya:
Purchase Kappa Mechanic - Recovers tower's health.
Wind God's Blessing - Boosts nearby allies' movement speed.
Summon - 50 faith for Kappa's mecha for one lane.
Fury - Passively adds chance to stun the target

UNIQUE WEATHER SYSTEM

Weather Control Device is used to change the current weather

Other than towers that can partially controlled by players, there is also the weather system which gives certain effect on all heroes/units in the entire map on a certain time. Each command costs Faith to activate the weather. Each weather names were taken from Touhou fighting games (TH10.5 and TH12.3). These are the kinds of weather and their effects:
Drizzle (12 Faiths) - increases mana regen by 2.5 for 60s (All units)
Scarlet Mist (5 Faiths) - grants 15% life steal for 80s (All melee units)
River Mist (20 Faiths) - grants invisibility for 40s (All heroes)
Monsoon (12 Faiths) - deals 8 damage per second for 60s (All units)
Spring Haze (35 Faiths) - grants physical immunity for 25s (All units)
Typhoon (5 Faiths) - increases attack damage by 35% for 60s (All units)
Snow (5 Faiths) - reduces movement speed by 35% for 60s (All units)
Calm (12 Faiths) - increases health regen by 5 for 60s (All units)
Tempest (35 Faiths) - increases movement speed by 200% for 25s (All units)
Scorching Sun (20 Faiths) - the next time a hero uses a skill in the next 25s, she will suffer 8% of her current health as damage (All heroes)

CONCLUSION

Utsuho's ultimate skill - Hell's Artifical Sun

Overall, I would like to say this map is awesomely good. The skill effects are not exaggerated, like explosions here and there, which tend to make my computer lag.
But the AI system is still not too good. They still lack some 'stupidness':

• In the beginning of the game, they always buy the same items, and as the game progresses, the items are still the same.
• For nearly-perfect AI-controlled heroes (upgrading items as the game advances, using variety of spells, and strategically maintain the distance as well as their HP), they have Reimu Hakurei and Koakuma. But the error is they always buy items set which exceed their fundings in the beginning of the game (buying 4000+ Points worth items while the starting Points are only 850).
• They like to be the tanker, don't care if they're Intelligent-based heroes. Even if the creeps are all gone, they still don't return to base until their health is very red (about 10% I think).
• For Koishi's ultimate skill, it makes the character unconscious, thus making the player can't control the hero even if her life is in danger. But when she's controlled by AI, she can escape to base when her health is red.

That's it for my review this time.

To download the map, you can visit the website: http://www.touhou.cc/ (it's on Chinese)

Or you can click here for direct jump to the english thread: http://www.touhou.cc/bbs/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=115

Thank you and have a good day ;-)