The original combat system, or at least the system that was in place when I originally purchased the game, felt inventive, intuitive, smooth and rewarding.
Today, the combat has become an unavoidable expensive slog fest. The healing and defensive cards USED to be useful, now they just clog up your action economy, forcing you to use them to only mitigate the pummeling you're gonna take while you're waiting for more striking cards to come down the line. You MUST carry potions with you at all times, because the healing and defensive cards are useless, so you barely make any profit hunting, and are thus forced to hunt all day long to afford the story quests. It's just so unenjoyable that I'm not really sure the story makes up for it anymore.
If I have to FORCE myself to play a game, the game is bad. Why did you feel the need to fuck up a perfectly enjoyable experience with all of this immense overcomplication?