i want to chose a final battle team for suikoden 5 but i dont know which characters i should use. most of my characters are on high levels. also i have been trying to obtain suikoden 2 and 3 for a long time but i cant find them anywhere.

It depends... the final boss uses a lot of powerful magic if i remember rightly... most of my frontline characters died straight away... you really need a good balance. With so many character's I can't really say who you should use. Lorelai is VERY useful if you level up her weapon and give her some decent runes... she has strong magic and attack and well as a decent magic defence... she won't do the most damage but she is a strong and dependable character.

I can't really advise you cos i don't know what characters you've got but i'll tell you who i used and see if that helps...

I used the Prince, Lyon, Kyle, Miakis, Lun and Viki. You'll need a couple of decent magic users (in my case viki and miakis) just to keep your party alive - i had Viki equipped with teh Resurrection rune - and that's al she did throughout th entire thing and had Miakis with the Shield Rune backing her up. Use a couple of fighters who are relactively quick and can get multiple hits in - equipping them with a Drain and Counter Rune will make life a lot esier for you too.
So as Flame said a well balanced team is your best option - make sure all weapons are leveled up to the max and don't forget the healers

I also recommend using the Illusion Tactic - not only does it give a +10 bonus to ALL attributes - but few of your characters are lined up with one another so any column and row attacks (and there are a few of them) will at most hit two of your characters at a time.

As for Suikoden II - well all i'll say s good luck. As for Suikoden III that you'll have to import an NTSC version - i highly recommend www.videogamesplus.ca i've had plenty of dealings with them now and the service is brilliant - actually bought Suikoden II from the two weeks back.

Well, I can give you a list of the powerhouses making the final boss a real pushover. I defeated him in a couple of rounds and because it was so easy I used lesser characters the time after that.

Anyway:

- Richard: the best physical defender in the game for he will parry and counter almost every attack. Has a very high attack power and a very high rate for multi striking.

- Zerase: the strongest mage in this game. Her Night Rune is overpowered and will make things very easy for you if you combine her with the Tiger Formation and placed in the backrow.

- Viki: she is amongst the best now aswell unlike the previous Suikodens. She has a great ability called Chain Magic and uses it often. Has good stats and overall very good magic power.

- Jeane: she is still one of the strongest mages so she would make a good asset to your team. Has high magical power and defense. Downside is that one of her epics is already filled.

- George: he is physically the strongest but lacks magical defense. You could use him for the raw power he brings but the final boss uses a lot of magic and that might be troublesome for George.

- Rahal: in my opinion the strongest dragonknight. He has high attack power and a good chance for multistriking leading up to 4/5 hits. He has nice magical stats aswell so comes well prepared.

These are just a handful characters that could help you alot. Though they are often put aside for being extremely strong and making things far too easy.
An easy trick would be having the Tiger Formation and having Richard up front.
All the enemies will attack him 9/10 times and he will parry AND counter the, 9/10 times. Equip him with a Killer Rune and he will be even more dangerous. I had him make a '5 hit deathstrike' once. Which is the death strike the Killer Rune has in this game causing for an instant death, Richard gave 5 of those hits to 1 enemie making sure he was dead....REALLY dead =P.

EDIT:

Another character that might be of use is Cathari. Not only does she come with the Godspeed Rune (former True Holy Rune), but also does she come with an incredible attack power. She lacks magical power but makes up for it in raw attack power. Give her a Killer Rune and a Double Edge Rune and she easily tops the 1000 DMG barrier.
Be careful though because she doesn't has a lot of HP.

thanks for that, but it wouldnt let me use george in the final battle. anyone know why

That's just how the game is unfortunatly - i suppose the designers didn't want you to have an easy time of things.
I take it from that last post you've gone into the battle then - any luck?

You have to be in New Game + to use Georg there.

i won using

shoon, miakis, belcoot, prince, lyon, cathri
sadly only the prince survived

Well, then you exactly know why you couldn't use Georg. But as was said above me, you can use him in a New Game +.
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend using him anyway because he has extremely low magic defense and you know how much this monster deals with magical attacks. Or if you have given Georg a Saint's Cloack then it might be doable but that means you can't have Georg kill more than 30 people before you get the Saint's Cloak.

I am quite surprised by Cathari's raw power and I will challenge the final boss another time using her in my team to see if she can be worth anything.
She is dealing around 1000 dmg per shot now and that is more then most runes, so she is quite valuable in that place, too bad she lacks good epics.

I had: Hero, Miakis, Lyon, Chatari, Belcoot and I think Zerase.
Only Chatari died.

So far I have been using:

Richard, Frey, Miakis, Lyon, Viki, Jeane, Zerase, Isabel, Killey, Lorelai, and Rahal.
Though I am looking for other characters to use and at the moment I am quite interested in Hazuki.
I have never used her, though when I recruited her I was planning to use her atleast once, so might aswell level her up and see what she is capable of.

I do have to say that I just realised how many 'SS' rank epics Richard has, it is a lot.

Hazuki was a HUGE disappointment for me... I tired her out (I basically tried out every character in Suiko V almost) and I really wanted to make good use of her but I found her quite useless... I can't quite remember why though.

One underdog would have to be Bernadette... She has amazing magic power (She is still in the top 5 of the game I think) but also has a somewhat decent attack. She is long range and so her attack will always hit from the back row (and if she has the magic absorb rune then that is invaluable). None of her stats are really that lacking... she has good speed I believe and although there are more powerful mages out there they don't come anywhere near as being as balanced as Bernadette... I don't see the point of having a character who can cause huge damage with spells but has huge weaknesses.

However if you want absolutely NO challenge whatsoever... then use Zerase... *yawn*

Yeah i used Bernadette quite a bit as a replacement for a certain character who left, who shall remain nameless, she ended up being one of the key members for the Queen's Campaign final battles and for the Final Dungeon - definitely worth giving a go

Speaking of underdogs did anyone bother with Lun, Logg and to a lesser extent Kisara all the way through - i actually relied heavily on Lunn through the first half of game being a decent all rounder she was my main mage apart until the likes of Viki and Miakis showedand with the right training and Pierce she could definitely pack a punch so i ended up keeping her on and Logg kinda got pulled along for the ride - good attack stats but just too damn slow.

Zerase wasn't too bad as long as you didn't use the Star Rune and kept her to the weaker runes - i liked her character so i wanted to use her but she was way too over powered, so just limited her to the more basic stuff -and kept her out of the most of the boss battles - stupid i know but it all worked out in the end - except when i knew i was coming to the end of a battle and then i'd unleash the most powerful spell of each of my characters i had on them just for the effect - poor Dolph - he never had a chance.

I liked Lun and used her a lot in the beginning... but anything Lun can do, Lorelai can do better. Her magic and Strength are better and Lorelai can combo more often I think. She has very good speed and basically is my favorite battle character. She can instantly switch between being an attacker and a mage and fulfills both roles perfectly. I cannot express my love for her enough.

I used Lorelai quite a lot (got her into the early 50's at least) she was a decent fighter (deadly with the Thunder Rune)and used her in the final dungeon but i never really paid her that much attention - she was just kinda there and if it hadn't been for all the ruin events i doubt i would have used her as much as i did - i'll keep a closer eye on her next time and see what she really can do.

I have used Lun quite alot aswell, mainly because you have to use her in the beginning that much. I found her to be pretty useful and she had a nice unite with her dad that looked quite weird.
After that I didn't was forced to use her anymore, I think I stopped doing so because I got new characters and wanted to use those.

I'll definatly look up some other characters to find out there possible strength. Did people use Shigure and Sagiri much?
I know that when you get Shigure early in the game he is extremely useful and packs a lot of strength and multiple hits and does a good job at killing of enemies.

I also say that Kyle is a good character although he seems to be not liked here around this board last time I mentioned him. When you recruit him he is awesome and shows he is similar to Flik (stats wise and has a lot of stats that are higher).

Shigue and Sagiri were cool - Sagiri along with Bernadette were my main long range attack charcters, the whole background story to Sagiri was a nice touch as well, i just wish i'd gotten her earlier in the game so i could have incorparated her more into my team.

I am a big Kyle advocate - he was virtually in my team from the moment i recruited him right till the last battle - i refused to use Georg in after a while as he made things too easy so i used Kyle to replace him as my main fighter. I really did struggled with him when i first started training him up, that might have been the fact i was doing the ruins in The Big Hole at the time but he just kept on dying, it was only because of the drain rune that i managed to keep him going for any length of time. Once i got around that though he was definitely one of the best characters in the game