Second time around with the straight razor could not have been a bigger improvement over the first.

First time my face was on fire with really patchy results, had to finish up with regular razor and it took forever.

Second time I went overkill on prep and had much better results. Obviously it's impractical to do all of this prep every time, but for the second go around I went for:

Super hot shower
Exfoliating facial scrub
Hair conditioner let soak on beard while in showe
Hot lather
Hot towel
Re-lather
Then shave.

Like I said, I don't think I can expect that level of prep everytime I shave. Setting up the steamer for a hot towell at 6:00 AM is out of the question, but I went from barely being able to get through one, bad pass with tons of irritation to three complete passes with much better closeness and much less irritation. I was able to do a full with the grain pass, across the grain everywhere but my neck, and full against the grain. I do have some razor burn, but nothing compared to last time. And if I tried three passes with my soon-to-be-forgotten fusion? You're joking.