I happened to be stuck on this.  I am not able to make progress without getting killed to often.  The game is very tight on resources.  Weapons break, life runs out, and so on.  Anyone have any tips?  Like, is there a way to get more hit points for the characters and so on?

Ok, I am making some progress by doing grinding (for the lack of the better word).  First get Steve (the mech) more life and a projectile weapon and then use that to build up the other characters, for easy range kills.

@richardhutnik

www.gamefaqs.com

This is a awesome site that provides walkthrough guides in case you get stucked!!

What part are you on? Sounds like the very beginning.

To get more HP for the characters, there are tiny chests spread through in different areas of the game. These chests contain items that raise defense and raise max hp for max. As you complete requirements for the restoration of each town, these chests will appear in the future and elsewhere.

Have you fully explored the inital city yet? That's a good place to start.

Also make you are constantly upgrading your weapons. The game provides a pretty good tutorial for this. As each weapon levels up, stop and apply spheres based on their respective upgrade paths.

Oh, and in combat, use max's gun to lure out one monster at a time. Kill it and repeat. Make effective use of blocking and charged attacks.

What do the raise hitpoint chests look like? I keep getting things to upgrade weapons, but not anything to add hit points or reduce damage. I am now going nuts with Steve and mech projectile attacks mostly.

The issue I ran into was that I kept getting killed early. I addressed that with a few Steve upgrades and also some grinding with Monica. I still would like to beef up the defensive side though.

I do find Gamefaqs is good for things that are linear in their approach. I also had luck at times finding videos for specific games.

I am currently at Chapter 2 I believe, Butterfly Forest. Just managed to get past the swamp area.

Well, on a side note, I happened to find out again, by playing, that Level 5 designed this. And there is word that a new Dark Cloud is being worked on. I had, for a sec, thought Level 5 might be in trouble, but it appears to be the opposite. Last word on the latest Dark Cloud was that it was supposed to be out this year (PS3 exclusive).

You don't find the hp chests (really, you get specific items from them that raise defense and either max's or monica's hp) in dunegons. There are some of them in the inital city. Keep progessing through butterfly forest and find those orbs for the georama machine. As you get some rebuild completion, go into the future and look for chests. I don't remember if there are any yet, but you might as well go there now to check for them. They are very small, not sure how to describe them other than that. Go into the village and the portal is towards the back. Remember to visit the future when it says "there has been a change in the future" to see what you did.

If I were you, I wouldn't rely on steve too much. Focus on building up Max's and Monica's weapons, especially the melee weapons. You really need to get blocking down and have some bread in your quick select so you don't die. Save after each dunegon level.

use a Pikachu!

there are chest hidden around the town areas that contain poitions that increase your health.

I have a similar problem. Steve breaks down way too fast. I'm on the second level of the forest area, and they have far more trees than I can handle!