And this is why it's very hard for me to take the game seriously.
Luck, randomness and cheap crap.
...and yet I still love it for some reason...
I love Razor's Edge. The trials, though, are a holdover from NG3 and in a way they are holdovers from an experiment for Sigma 2. They were not properly playtested (or tested at all, most likely) and they are horribly broken. Genshin's habit of shooting a void at someone, animation and all, and having it then travel at a player behind him is a great example. Marbus flipping out and sometimes outright leaving the levels because his attacks aren't just tracking one player is another. Zedonius landing and taking flight rapidly, Fiend Genshin changing targets midstring...the list goes on and on. These are borderline impossible without abusing certain moves over and over. I hate them.
But the rest of the game? Love it. If we could get a proper dodge back, fix the dead zone on dodging, fix some of the targeting issues, vary AI patterns to be more calculating in attacks than just looking like first time DoA players being handed a controller and mashing, and a couple of other things, it would possibly be the best action game I've ever played. Black is hard to top but the framework is there for it to be dethroned.