specific favorites

I don't want to take away from the Favorite Final fantasy post but I decided to post this to be more specific.
I have a hard time narrowing down to one favorite when their are so many aspects of a game so I was wondering what peoples favorites were in these categories:

Gameplay
Story
Characters

So for example:
My favorite Gameplay was XII
I didn't much like the battle system, but it was my favorite build-up system. I liked how customizable the characters were so I could chose which character I wanted to be my black mage/white mage/thief etc...

My favorite story was VIII
I personally realted well to the characters and the story. Especially the Laguna/Raine/Ellone part and I was touched by that scene when Laguna is in Winhill and he says something along the lines of please let me be in this puny bed when I wake up. I have had moments like that when I was going through some hard times. I related well to the story.

My favorite characters differ alot but overall cast of characters I would say IX
I think the characters interacted well and I am a huge Vivi fan, but I also like Steiner, Quina, Freya and Garnet. I felt Vivi's story was very touching and Garnet was relatable as was Freya.

So seeing my answers it makes it hard to choose 1 favorite and I am interested to see if others also find it difficult to narrow it down to 1.

Well of course it's hard to have one all time favorite in the series because none of them are perfect. Each game has it's flaws that another one builds on or compliments, and each game excels in different areas making a list of favorites much more feasible.
For me I won't go into a huge wall o' text about any of my choices yet because I only woke up a little while ago.

~Gameplay: Hmm this is a hard one but Ima run FF12 here. While there are a few annoying flaws in the system I do love the battle system to death because it keeps me on my toes and I can play my characters without playing them per se.

~Story: Gah this one is easy only because I still have yet to pick up the ps1 classics so I guess FFX (X-2 had a story? What?) takes the cake here. I liked the religious and political plot-line of X and how all the death and destruction Sin gave out could really get to you at times (AT TIMES) and I liked that. The pacing was pretty good and while it was a bit cliche at times I still found it to be a good story.

Characters: Again I don't have the ps1 trilogy under my belt so I guess the annoying protagonist from FFX and his group beat the obnoxious protagonist and his group from 12 (yes I have played others but for the most part the characters were nonexistent). I'm running low on time to type so Auron Rikku (FFX not X-2) Lulu and well most of the cast (excluding the ronso dude) were likable characters that all were built on nicely. All the characters developed throughout the story and it seemed that none were ignored in that regard. Mind you I am talking about the main cast here.