Getting lives

You need plenty of lives to get through the entirety of the game and you can quickly get lives by getting a chain of at least 14 or 15 and if you have a combo chain higher than said number, it will still be 50k. On Easy Difficulty, you get an extra life for every 400,000 points, 500,000 on the normal setting and 600,000 on the hard setting.

Heavy Damage

Jump kicking is actually faster than stringing attacks. Press B on the controller, then the X button to kick. Press A to pick up a melee weapon and press the Y button to use it and you can even follow it up with a jump kick for extra damage.