If you've already read our preview of Tiny Hero's little diamond in the rough, then you have a good idea of what Land of Legends is all about and that my expectations of this game were pretty high. But for those of you in the cheap seats, here's a quick recap of the game and whether it has lived up to what we had hoped and dreamed for..

Land of Legends, or LOL as it's called around the Internet, is, at first glance, a simple fantasy themed turn-based strategy game offering 8 races to choose from, with four scenarios for each and three tutorial campaigns thrown in for good measure. The game offers multiplayer, skirmish with hot seat play for two players (and against AI controlled players if you hate playing with others on your own computer) and a variety of units for each race of varying degrees of skill and strength. There's the usual suspects you'd expect in a turn based fantasy themed strategy title include terrain pluses and minuses, influence, city capturing, light resource management, troop management and tactical combat that focuses on movement and tactical finesse.

The game's mechanics are plain vanilla and boiled down to their core. Players will capture cities, which will in turn gain them money, build units and try to conquer maps. There are special building types for healing and making extra gold, which contributes to creating even more units.

Each race offers their own special skills, combat style and bonuses: Some use magic, while other use sword and bow to get the job done, other simply are fond of earning cash, while other peddle influence, have advantages with movement or even have the ability to raise an army from the enemy's dead. Even though some units sound a bit more flashier than others, LOL does a nice job of balancing each out despite the fact that each race is limited to four different types to create.

The goal of the game is to obviously build, manage your money and to capture cities to gain even more money or new races from which you can create even more combatants.

While the game in pretty much summed up above when applying it to multiplayer or skirmish modes, the campaigns offer different challenges like capturing a certain building or stopping the enemy from accumulating a certain amount of wealth in a certain number of terms. The single campaigns are varied and span all the races - players start off with a simple three part tutorial and then move on to play each race - unlocking the other races' campaigns as they go.

And that's the game in a nutshell. There's not really anything to complain about when it comes to the gameplay. LOL can be best described as Heroes of Might and Magic without the city building and heroes to deal with. It uses the most basic concepts of the fantasy turn-based strategy genre, boils them down and makes them simple and fun to play. But for those looking for the next Master of Magic, Heroes of Master and Magic, you'll not find what your looking for here. LOL is a simple and plain offering.

Multiplayer works but sadly whoever has purchased the game at this point isn't taking the time to play it online. It's very hard to find someone to play against online at the moment, and that coupled with the fact that when you do finally get into an Internet game it takes forever to play out turns because there's no limit to how long a player takes.

While multiplayer is a bit disappointing, Skirmish mode and the single player campaigns do take up the slack and make the game fun. Skirmish mode against the AI can be a blast to play, and with the option to randomize your race, your enemy's race and the map you play on, the mode offers a lot of variety.

Overall LOL is a well balanced game. The graphics are cartoonish, the sound isn't anything to write home to mother about, and the storyline in the single player campaign is ultra lite with lots of cheesy dialogue. But the actual gameplay makes up for any shortcomings you might have about the overall presentation, and the storyline was purposely designed to be hokey and non-epic.