Not mentioned above is the significance of the various LAND ASAP messages (or their absence). Nor the difference between a "stable" situation and a "dynamic" one.
Once you have worked out how to fly the aircraft, it is pretty easy to fly. You then need to work out how (and where) to land it.
The fact it is called an "Essential Bus" is the root cause of the problem - too much wired through one place.
So to me, I would not want to return ASAP to field of departure. I would want to fly for as long as needed to understand what I really do have / not have (see Note 2), and land only after that period of time, and at a suitable airfield with a good plan of how to do the approach/landing. That might be the point of departure, it might be destination, it might be somewhere else. I would not unnecessarily delay a landing, since a lot of redundancy has been lost, and a further failure, whilst not life threatening, might make life more difficult.
IIRC from the Sim, there is nothing "urgent" about getting back on the ground. Once you have worked how "how" to fly/manage it is quite easy. It is a great training exercise in CRM. I suspect in the air it is even easier...
Current A319/320/3212 P1