A, B, X, Y used for actions/skills/spells
The left and right triggers used in conjunction with A, B, X, Y to bring up new shortcuts to skills/actions/spells/potions (example you can attack with your sword with A, and press left trigger and A to use a spell, or right trigger and A to use a potion, etc). This allows upto 12 skills/actions to be mapped to the face buttons alone.
To get even more in, it could be that while holding the trigger you can enter a button combination, and an ability (whichever one you mapped to the combo) is used. This would allow for even more abilities to be accessable.