(crosses fingers re law) Good.

I know I put my people in because of the combos and not so much because of magic. *g* Good stuff.. I love that you can "level up" the combos. Never tried the trading post though *shot*

Q1. Party set up I think, should depend on your playing style. Do you prefer physical attacks to magic? And do you have a ton of mushrooms with you if you do prefer magic? ;D I'm not sure if you're asking for a recommended setup for the final boss or for the game in general, as I just tended to switch my parties around while playing the game. (Leveling them up before the final boss is really easy by using the training hall.)

My parties for the final dungeon were as follows:
Secondary party: Helmut, Travis, Jeremy, Aldo (healer) <-- my pretty boys party. lol.
+ The boss you fight is ridiculously easy. No real need for magic on this one. I just had their weapons at lvl.15 plus everyone either had the Diamond or Platinum armor set equipped.

Final party: Hero, Hervey, Sigurd (healer), Ted (healer)
+ Admittedly died once for this boss. At least one pair with a high-damage combo attack would be very helpful during this battle. Also, two healers are a must, in case something happens to your other healer. The Hero does pretty well with a water rune, so you can choose to make him a healer instead, though I just opted to give him a rage rune and a fury rune to deal a mad amount of damage. Though the fury rune might do better for another character who won't be doing anything else but physical attacks.

Q2: Trading is definitely the best way to make money. I can make a million potch after an hour or two of trading. Though having a prosperity rune (the eldest brother of those trio you recruit in the hot springs has one) equipped while leveling up also helps.

I actually made a trading faq to make trading a helluva lot easier for me. I can upload if you want.

The nice thing about Suikoden 4 is that you can mess around with your party during the entire game (but well enough to get you through the other boss fights at least) since the training hall gives you an easy way to level characters up (granted this probably isn't a good alternative for those who don't want to fight more extra battles than they have to).

I don't think a tank is as necessary in Suiko4 as it was in say... Suiko3, in which a tank with a firefly rune was almost your best way of survival - especially in strategy battles.

Granted, general set-up for your party would probably comprise of two attackers (or attacker/all-rounder) and one magic user, except pure magic-users are a bit tiresome to bring along on regular battles, since their physical attacks are so weak. I did gallivant around with Jeanne and Viki both in my party for a while just for the heck of it though. The thing is you'll really have to keep switching characters around if you want to discover combo attacks.

Mao and Nao is fun if only to play the mint and mushroom ant armies. <3 Otherwise, if you're not a big magic-user you'll probably not have much use for them. I didn't use a single mushroom while I was playing the game.

Admittedly, I didn't play around as much with the characters during my first play through, as I was planning to do all that the second time around, except I got distracted by other games in the middle of my second game.

Q2: Those pearls are love. I just buy every single pearl and sell when the price in Mordo hits 8000-8500. And the Trading FAQ here (http://arcina.com/temp/tradepost_summary.txt). It tells you what to buy/sell in each city. It made my life a whole lot easier. I have price ranges (by city and by item) on separate sheets, but the range of where it's best to sell is always the same. (I am hoping of course, that these don't change per game.)