My line of thought back then was its better to have a card in hand I want to cast, than have a creature or land Im not currently using, and while weve seen similar effects printed since then, most of those will be two mana or more (outside of Village Rites)
Adds counters, and when you add counters to it, lets you scale up fast
Returning Characters to hand and grinding out card advantage frustrated aggro decks and defined the control archetype for the color
Holographic and full-art cards appear and feel slightly thicker than standard commons
Blood Rite The Vampire deck stands out to me as the most relevant to supporting its corresponding type in a Cube, with meaningful support up and down the mana curve and notably offering some cheap white Vampires, which we really only see on Ixalan
When enchanted creature dies, return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control