This is part of the streamlining Origins does to reduce time spent in the menu. While in Eternal Wings, you have to either make sure to max out your decks or accept annoying Pass magnus being thrown in, in Origins you can cherry-pick the cards you need with little to no disadvantage. Considering the different attack system and the discard feature, individual decks for each character would not even make sense. Combos would be far too easy to pull off, and it would hurt the challenge of making fast decisions to avoid death and gain the upper hand.
"seemed" is the key word here. The complexity of the battle system is hidden behind its perceived simplicity. It's true that the lack of multiple numbers on cards makes things look simpler, but the game does provide a decent amount of difficulty and takes an entirely different approach to master. In Eternal Wings, it's enough to take care of your HP every now and then while making sure you don't wait too long during a turn (and maybe check the number of cards remaining in your deck). Origins stepped up the challenge by asking for a more multi-layered resource and risk management. HP, selection time, party turnover time, enemy turnover time, MP, and equipment durability - all those are factors one should be aware of during a battle.
Jumping straight into the action Eternal Wings style just won't do it in Origins. What's more fun is thinking out your actions beforehand and gaining victory as a result. It can look like this:
- Do I need to heal someone?
- Is an enemy about to attack? (see action bar in the top left corner of the screen; you can even press R and check the enemy's delay gauge in the target menu)
- Is the healer or the person to be healed going to be attacked before I get a chance? (see question above)
- Do I have enough MP to pull off that combo?
- How many hits does my equipped weapon have left?
- What cards do I have on hand? (switch characters or discard magnus if necessary)
- Will someone be able to join my combo? (white delay gauges at the top of the screen, weak attack in hand)
There is much more about this battle system than meets the eye. Not everyone can grasp the gameplay elements and make proper use of them, which is why some people struggle with this game. But that's not even where it starts…sadly the controls aren't too well explained, unless you read the manual or periodically check the travel log. Besides just pressing the A button to play cards, you can use the C-stick to switch characters, press B to discard magnus, or press X to cut a turn short (e.g. in case you want to save MP for later).
In Eternal Wings, you can only take what's given to you each turn, with no strategic moves to do like switching characters or discarding* magnus (*without needing to be attacked to do so, or ending your turn after one card). You have little control during the actual battle, so the focus of the game lies on the preparation, aka deck building. There is also less pressure on the player as the stakes aren't nearly as high (missing a turn or a bonus most often doesn't result in someone dying), and the battles are much slower-paced. Pulling off nice combos is less rewarding since the damage increase is the only bonus, whereas in Origins you all get all these bonuses for long combos:
- MP gain (and in turn, more special attacks to use)
- More damage (accumulating hits also reduces the enemy's defense for the length of the combo)
- Higher TP bonus
- Knockdown (this buys you some time for another attack)
- Attacking the enemy when they're down results in a critical hit
That's it for my comparison of the two battle systems. I mainly wanted to shed some light on the ins and outs of Origins in particular because it's harder to understand and easier to give up on.
