Whoo, sorry if I'm a bit late!
I'm working on two very combat-heavy stories at the moment, and personally, I find Ogre's second method more effective for a quick action scene in the story. As opposed to heavy-handily setting up a turn-based, player-input combat scenario, I've set up my battles so there's a short bit of dialogue, the fight begins, and the player is greeted with a choice - the "Block" or "Press the Attack" mentioned above. One of these paths leads to death or injury - the other leads to an advance in the plot and combat. This way, you conserve mental energy for the rest of the story while breezing through fight scenes.