You have to learn to actually watch how much HP your attacks are doing and not just trust the stats on the page, because the stats are kinda liars. Every single hit on every keyblade has a different multiplier and some keyblades lower in strength actually hit harder because they posses higher multiplier. Likewise Days subtly does away with the combo finisher system as now multiple hits in combos actually register as finishers, early game keyblades with short combos mostly only have one finisher but mid to late game many keyblades with long or multi-branch combos actually have multiple finishers some gears even have nearly all their hits qualify as finishers. And this changes for every single character, no character (well besides Roxas and Xion) share the same multipliers and finishers. Honestly I find the easiest way to see this system is with Demyx several of his gears when coupled with blizzard finish (which at times is innate on these gears for him) will make it seems like he's freezing enemies every 2-3 hits in his rather lengthy combos. And there is more let's take something like Pandora Gear...
For Roxas both version give vitality surge, vitality barrier, and alive n' kickin with the + version being all around superior. But now stick this on Xigbar and he gets combo-block, combo-jump, and combo-airslide which is asking for a completely different playstyle. On top of this while the stat differences are still large Pandora gear + only gives 12 shots but the regular Pandora Gear actually gives Xigbar 24 shot. In addition the combo of this weapon makes it so his ground shot fires four shots and his air combo fires four shots. Which means that Xigbar can only get off 3 combos with this weapon while the regular version lets him get off 6 combos before reloading. What it lacks in power it makes up in DPS and makes for Xigbar's best weapon. And if you're wondering why that over his Zero gear it's because pandora gear has a higher multiplier so his shots actually deal more damage with either pandora gear than his Zero gear. The optimal way to play Xigbar in mission mode in solo is to use aerora+regular pandora gear.
Or how about Zexion a lot of people assume because he's lower on the strength spectrum that he has bad physical, and that's not actually true. Zexion has very high physical and magic damage it just comes down to which gear you have equipped with, he is fundamentally a glass cannon. Namely the gears that give him the book eating illusion finishers deal significant amounts of damage because they have very high damage multipliers. Which is why Ultimate gear is actually Zexion's best gear unless you're going raw magic which is inherently sort of cumbersome. My point being in all this is there is a LOT to the gear system for Roxas and for every other character, a lot to learn, a lot to play around with. (Didn't even touch on the amount different ability combos, the speed swings, or how units interact with each gear and each character).
Then we get into magic and man that's a whole different beast in it of itself, despite only have 5 spell elements every single spell works differently. Fire is weak homing fireball, fira is a powerful piercing shot, Firaga is basically a fire bomb that drops below you with a large fire AOE ignite explosion. Blizzard is a multihit ice spell that chases things and is able to move at shot angle the other spells can't, Blizzara drops a blizzard land mine in front and anything that touches it causes it to explode into a freezing mist, Blizzaga lays an aerial blizzard mine which auto detonates after a set amount of time. Thunder shoots a stream of thunderbolts that rips through large enemies and is stopped by physical objects allowing all the bolts to be focused into a single spot, thundara drops a small rain of thunder bolts over an area, thundaga drops a massive single bolt. Aero fires a homing bullet that will lift enemies hit by it, aeroa summons a ball of wind which chases enemies down for awhile hurting them and hitting them until they are lifted or the spell wears off, aeroga summons two blades of wind to spin around you sucking in enemies and hurting them a lot in the process. Cure is a single large HP restore, Cura is a regen spell, and curaga drops a healing field to let you heal your partners. Every single spell has its uses, except thundara because they spaced the bolts too far apart and Curaga is much more niche (generally only good for bosses where you have a lot of waiting or in multiplayer). It's actually a lot of options to play with in battle and then you get to the leveling system where it subtly improves or adds extra little effects to your spell. Thundaga gets an electric shock wave at the point it lands, Cure gets leaf bracer, fire and blizzard both get a lot quicker, etc..
Then there is the abilities with how each one can be customized. Your can turn your aerial recovery into an attack that knocks backs enemies, make it recover much quicker and knock back enemies, make it recover and deal damage, etc... You can make your block protect you 360, remove recoil from blocking, increase recoil from blocking, auto-block attacks for you, move you forward when blocking, let you do a block counter attack, inflict jolt/freeze/ignite/life, and/or generate HP prizes. You can equip up 3 block modifiers so it's up to you to make your block into what you want. You can also equip block levelers to increase the potency of the chance based effects or even just make your block last longer and feel better. You can customize your dodge roll in a number of ways as well or you can just level it up to make it faster and longer.
What I'm trying to get at here is there is a lot of meat to the gameplay system, a lot of customization, and a lot to play with. Everything you add has an immediate effect or reward you can recognize, you have this clear feeling of growth where each day you are growing just a little stronger so by the end game your final panel deck adds up to be greater than the sum of its parts. Even something as simple as one extra case of magic can be quite meaningful and you really can build Roxas to just about any play style you want through combination of abilities, gear, and magic. I also think the magic system in it of itself is very rewarding. Like for example do you add an extra fire panel and equip say blizzard charm to get the magic bracer ability? Or do you add in an ether or hi-ether and equip a ring that gives you either boost. In one combination you will have an extra cast of just fire magic and protection from flinching when you use spells. In the other combination is you go with an ether you get 1 extra cast of magic for all your spells equipped and when you factor in ether boost you can get 2 casts of magic for every spell, if you are using hi-ether you get 3 casts for all your spells. And if you know you're getting 3 extra casts maybe you don't need two of those thunder, blizzard, and fire spell immediately freeing up 6 slots for you to do whatever. There are a lot of fine nuances to building your panel deck this way and managing your space that I just find very enjoyable and rewarding. It's also nice that level ups aren't the end-all be-all thing to focus on, a lot of times it can be worth it to sacrifice space for your level panels for something else. Oh and Roxas at the end also just feels very mobile with his multiple air dashes he can chain together, his lv3 high jump, his quick glide, and his lv3 haste drastically increasing his base movement speed to something closer to DDD/0.2 which is a really great feeling of growth.
And you know this is kind of why I hate the stat matrix with every fiber of my being. It removed all the finer nuances, all the immediate sense of reward, all the meaningful management and replaced with micromanaging busy work. Where you're not managing things like your spells and abilities, you're just micromanaging every single individual stat point which is just tedious and boring. Especially because Re:Coded uses Days's stat calculation so 1 extra point in this system is quite literally nothing, you have to build up things in bulk to really get something you can feel. Then there is the matter of the inability to remove chips whenever you want, part of what makes the panel deck so fun is the ability to freely customize yourself on the fly and with stat matrix you can't do that. Once you set a chip in its locked for life, you can sub it out but only if you have another chip in its place and they decided to make getting things like free space chips in bulk an incredibly tedious process. So a lot of times you just have to do a lot of unnecessary shifting around all because you wanted to move one or two chips, the panel deck is a fun well made puzzle with lots of different combinations you can make via its shapes...the status matrix is just busy work.
And then of course Coded and by extension BBS have the issue of having battle systems with very minimal meat. The Command deck is inferior to the command menu, it honestly always has been. The Command deck games are like fast food they are flashy, fun, and have a certain addictive allure to them...but there is no meat and very little reward for managing/learning the system. It's just slap in the strongest flashy attacks you can and press the command button to watch the game play itself for you. And like I said there is something fun about that but to me it's something that grows old quickly. Especially near the end game where it feels like in the command deck system you just stagnate and go through the motions. While with something like Days I always feel like I'm constantly growing, like I can switch things up in a meaningful manner, and that to the bitter end unless I'm fighting a pallet swap each mission generally feels like it asked me do something different either by swapping up the enemies or adding twists to old tasks.
Which brings me to my final point, enemy design in command deck games suck. There is no reward for learning the fights heck most enemies don't have anything TO learn, it just very mindless beat-em-up which I mean is fine but it doesn't feel rewarding to me. Days in contrast despite having its own issue with damage scaling and enemies having obnoxious amounts of HP, does. There are lots of little in's and out's to the enemies to make fighting them easier, faster, more rewarding. Take the invisible it seems like a scary thing but it has attacks you can learn each one with their own little counter to them. If it uses its orb rain it stands in one spot making it ideal for magic that can't track. If it comes to slice you it will always move to you in a straight line perfect for landmine/trap style spells, and since it doesn't combo but instead just does one slice it's ideal for being hit with counter attacks from your block or aerial recovery panels. Finally it flying sword attack can be dodged or blocked and if you strike the invisible just as it re-manifests at the end you will cause it to be stunned and sit there like a lump you can wail on. There is just lots of little things like that to the different enemies that make killing something in Days far more satisfying to me than it does in a command deck system.
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