Additionally, you are artificially limited to entering a dungeon with only four items on your person. Thus, the primary point of items is to be sold. The only permanent improvement you get from completing dungeons is that you earn spells and skills. However, many spells and skills can't be used until the characters' stats have reached a certain level. Thus, your characters essentially start from square one every time they enter a dungeon.
Every battle earns experience for the characters, and levels raise the characters' stats.
Additionally, upon completing a floor of the dungeon, you can allocate bonus points to characters that lack stats to let them use their spells and skills. As in Final Fantasy VIII, the difficulty of the monsters increases as the hero's level increases, ensuring the game is a constant challenge. With this system in place, however, one really must wonder why the game doesn't let you keep your experience from dungeon to dungeon. With the current experience system, you don't feel as though your characters are advancing or improving, despite the slowly growing list of skills and spells. There are plenty of interesting little side things to do in Time Stalkers, but none of them make the game particularly worth playing.