Rise Of Lost Empires by Gameloft is an amazingly fun fantasy inspired real time strategy game that features 20 campaigns with a fairly interesting - if not entirely inspired - story to drag you along that's supported by a brilliant adaption of the normal strategy controls for the iPhone.

One of the great features includes the way in which normal soldiers are automatically "grouped" with your heroes when they're selected together with a two-finger box selection. This makes movement and organization a snap as you quickly tap heroes and select your soon-to-be-dead target for a coordinated strike. There's no way to immediately jump to anywhere on your mini-map, but it does double as a way to quickly drag the screen around. Dropping buildings for manufacture can be a pain as it's all too easy to accidentally cancel their production before placement, but no money will be lost in this process.

The visuals consist of a stylistic cartoon art that makes gameplay easy to follow and there's little difficultly in assessing your surroundings for tactical advantages. The AI can be fairly simplistic and early on you'll find little challenge, so it's a shame there's no multiplayer available to test out your skill.

If you took the basic story of Warcraft, bundled it with the art of the sequel and layered the gameplay from the third installment you'd have something approximating Rise of Lost Empires. It's a unique beast in its own right and great fun in its simplicity.