If you're leveling up in a Valkyrie Profile game, you're doing something wrong. The only reason to level up is to gain more skills and/or attacks in VP2's case. All the major stat increases come from your equipment, not the puny increases that come in from leveling up (which is quite common of most tri-Ace games). There are ways to absolutely humiliate every enemy; you just have to experiment with elemental weaknesses, attack and weapon setups, and definitely Sealstones. You can avoid most enemy attacks with proper use of dashing and using the menu to 'change' the enemy's attack if if looks like an undesirable one.

I think the big turn-off to people when it comes to VP games is that the games actually expect you to understand the mechanics of the game in order to succeed. VP2 in particular expects you to understand the battle system rather early on in the game (this is why the game's difficulty seems to skyrocket in the third chapter or so).