Liv Games' Legendary Wars tries to succeed on many fronts, combining elements from several different types of strategy games. Unfortunately, while Legendary Wars' hybrid gameplay is ambitious, it is severely lacking when it comes to execution.

Legendary Wars most closely resembles a real-time strategy game, complete with resource collection and management taking place concurrently with actual battles. But the game's resource collection system is remarkably shallow, as resource gatherers can perform that function and that function only. This dramatically reduces any strategy that might be involved in deciding how to utilize your workers.

Perhaps in an effort to spice things up a bit, the developers of Legendary Wars also included some light roleplaying game elements. After winning a battle, gamers are given coins to use in upgrading their troops' stats, such as attack power, hit points and speed. The effects of these upgrades aren't earth shattering, but they are noticeable at least. The problem comes from the fact that there aren't any difficult choices to be made when upgrading your units, as Legendary Wars once again puts forth the illusion of strategy, without actually delivering.

What damages Legendary Wars' strategic depth more than anything, however, are the actual units players are given access to. As gamers progress, they can dispatch more and varied units, but by and large these fall into one of two categories: Ranged or melee attackers. The only real difference between knights and dwarves, for instance, is that the dwarves are both more expensive and more powerful. In a well-made strategy game, different enemies would require specific unit combinations to beat them, but gamers can stomp their way through Legendary Wars by just sending out wave after wave of the most powerful units they have access to.

While it can be fun to build up a massive army of archers and knights, and then send them marching across the playing field, the fact that no real strategy is required means that users will quickly lose interest in Legendary Wars. What's worse, is that the actual battles are broken up by more"active" missions, which more often than not involve a single character running across the screen, with gamers asked to steer it around obstacles and enemies. Attempting to vary a game's gameplay is a respectable goal, but these intermediate levels are just another thing that Legendary Wars isn't very good at.

Another way that Legendary Wars attempts to add depth to its gameplay is by giving users control over each of their units on the battlefield. This allows gamers to move units individually or en masse, on any or all of the battlefield's three "alleys." Unfortunately, between the units' small size and their tendency to clump up while fighting enemies, it is nearly impossible to effectively micromanage your troops.The game also includes special moves for each of its different unit types, but selecting specific units and directing their special abilities suffers from the same problems listed above.

Legendary Wars' inadequate touchscreen controls also cause problems with deploying new units. To send one of your troops into battle, you must first pick the horizontal row on which you would like them to travel, and then touch the icon to send out the unit. Problems, arise, however, from the fact that there is no clear way to deselect a unit, meaning that when you try to select another lane for deployment, it will often result in an already deployed unit shifting position. Gamers can work around this problem by deploying new units wherever they are currently selected, then commanding them to change lanes, but this makes what should be a simple procedure too time-consuming and difficult.

While Legendary Wars does feature bright, well-designed graphics and serviceable music and sound effects, there is little else to recommend it as a strategy game. At only $0.99, the game is an inexpensive purchase, and is reasonably effective as a mindless diversion, but there are far better ways to amuse yourself on the iPhone.

Final Score: D