Okay, it sounds like you're using chaining to try to do more damage to regular enemies, when that's really not what it should be used for. You need to master the weapon affinity system. You know how each weapon has six statistics (human, phantom, dragon, beast, evil, undead)? You need to build up those stats by attacking enemies of those types. Whenever you hit an enemy of a given type, there's a chance that your weapon's affinity for that type will go up, and then it'll do slightly more damage against that type. It works best to carry three weapons for two affinity types each (human/beast, undead/phantom, dragon/evil), because some affinities oppose others. You don't want to chain against regular enemies, because you want to maximize the chances you have for increasing weapon affinities. Using only single hits will build up affinities the fastest. Building up your weapons like this normally over the course of the game will generally keep them strong enough against whatever you're going to be fighting. Also, ONLY attack enemies with their specific weapons. It's too much of a risk to attack enemies of the wrong affinity type with the wrong weapon, and often you won't do any damage anyway. And yeah, grinding on the dolls will help.
Chaining is really only for maximizing damage opportunities against bosses or difficult normal enemies. Like, say, you'll be fighting a dragon whose only weak point is its tail, and it's hard to get to it, so you'll want to chain as many hits as you can together whenever you can reach its tail.
