Skelly's not too bad, especially if you didn't pick Guile as your entry into Viper Manor, since he would likely be the best innate Black Element you'll have until Ft. Dragonia, then the challenge is finding someone to replace Serge as your dominant White Element. Despite playing the game several times back in the day, I honestly didn't experiment too often with the party selection since most of them rubbed me the wrong way. I usually stuck to Kid, Leena, Glenn, the little turnip knight, Skelly, Guile, Norris, Gorbyc, Fargo, and Karsh for most of the game.

I think the reason why Suikoden's massive casts of characters never bothered me was because like 90% of them felt like they were meant to be there whereas CC's cast really feels like the staff was just trying to fill the game with as many "wackyNSFW" characters as they could regardless of whether they fit in the setting or not.