Free Step Dodge

Sometimes, in a Ninja Gaiden game, you just have to try harder. I know how you feel, man...

The guarding system is fucking retarded. It's like a character is barely blocking. Definitely not as good as NGB (blocking)

Yeah you even get shave damage from blocking a lot of attacks which sucks. I had the same frustration as you.
Try not blocking or moving, only ditching out at the last possible second. It's very risky, but it urges them to use SoB more frequently, so that you can stack the karma multiplier higher (even using SOB on everyone won't work if you're only getting x1.3 karma each time, if you understand what I mean).

"The name's Bond. 'Steel on Bond' B)"
I haven't played the demo in days. I seriously gotta get back to ranking up my stats so I can take on the dread challenge of unlocking Kasumi <.<

You can max-upgrade your character in one go on MN if using SoB. Then you'll have the skills and practice to get straight to it in Chapter Challenge.

@Brute: What makes it more frustratingi is when Ryu/Ayane refuse to steel on bond sometimes >:-( pff..TN and their stupid decisions smh

@Ghosty-J: James Bond, steel on bond...makes perfect sense XD lol

Yeah. I had a lot of trouble with it at first, too, because I thought it was only logical to point in the red guys' direction and hit "heavy." But that instead does the standard (or 180 flip) heavy input rather than the unique SoB one. I also tried dashing to avoid the input but that doesn't work, either. You just have to be looking their way and hit Heavy with no other input.

I recommend practicing on the wolverine fiends during the secret fight in Ryu's level. They use red grabs a lot and the timing is fairly generous. One you get used to the way the funky mechanic works, go back and try it on the normal humans.

They really need to fix this issue immediately. Ryu has a secret fight? Where to find it?

Right before the Kunai climb, you have to make two consecutive wall runs. Fall down one of those gaps instead of going across, and you'll go to a new arena with some more enemies. In Master Ninja, the enemies are blue wolverine fiends.

Killing them will also really help with your overall karma score, btw

Is there a difference between Hard difficulty and MN difficulty?

Well, first off, you need to get "S" in every difficulty in both levels, so you will have to do both with an "S."
& yes. You get the cloaking/grenade enemies and wolverine fiends in Master Ninja (secret fight is regular mooks in Hard), and one more alchemist spawns at the end. You also take a lot more damage and AI is more aggressive.
In Ayane's level, you only fight Van Gelfs (the purple things) in Master Ninja.

Grenades?!! Well that sucks :-(

They turn invisible, walk up to you, then drop 10k grenades on the ground at your feet. Very annoying.

>:-( Worse than I thought. I'm already dealing with punk ass enemies shooting rocket launchers at me.

Yeah. Only advice I can give on them is that if you have the head pounce, use that to stun the nearest melee enemy who's hoarding your butt. That will give you some time to get a shot off and take out the Rocket guys without being interrupted by ground foes.