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If I introduced someone to chess without telling them the knight can jump over pieces, and then I foil their plan at a critical point by doing this, that wouldn't be considered a fair match. I would owe them an apology for failing to explain the rules. But many video games don't even make an effort to explain their rules, and they have legions of fans who tolerate and glorify the practice.
If I don't know how much damage the fireball spell does before I spend my skill points on it, I can't make a meaningful decision. I'm just guessing what the designer would've done. That's not "challenging gameplay". It's trial and error.
Of course, that's less bad if the game allows me to re-spec or sell an item for the same price, but even then, just why? There's no reason I should have to buy it and go die with it to find out it's not worth buying. Just give me the information up-front so I can make a meaningful decision.
A frequent cause of trial and error in action games is requiring you to read an enemy's physical sprite movements to know what attack is coming and how to dodge it. This sounds like a fine idea, but the problem is that video game worlds aren't bound by real-life physics, so it's often not possible for even the most attentive and smartest player to infer how they should dodge an attack they haven't seen before.
Sekiro suffers from this a lot. For example, take the boss Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa, who is a giant riding a giant horse with a giant spear. He runs at you and swings his spear and you choose between trying to dodge or block. The reasonable guess is to dodge because this opponent looks like he should have enough force to send you flying. However, blocking is the correct option.
However Hollow Knight and Jedi: Fallen Order demonstrate that it's possible to do sprite-based telegraphs in such a way that the player can reasonably intuit them, even when real-life physics don't apply.