RPGs with the best: Story, Characters, Atmosphere, and Plot twists?

Story... Legend of Dragoons. To be honest, I might be a bit biased. I love dragons and thi swas the fourth console RPG I ever played. The story instantly drew me in and the more it went on the more excited I got, wondering what was up next. There were ups and downs, funny and downright depressing times, but all in all I can't help but love this story, even thought it got the cliche 'world destruction' tagged to it.

I kind of had a hard time making up my story wether to take LoD or one of the Suikoden ones, which are also some of my favourites. Especially because so far they never really had a 'we need to win or the world will be destroyed' theme, but also involved more ... 'personal' stories. The main character was always directly 'targetted' and it would have had personal consequences if one were to fail.

Characters: Definitly Suikoden. Aside from the many figures you can make your team of, I found myself always liking at least 80 % of the whole chast if not full 100 % EVEN the 'enemys'... That once in a while might have even turned into your allies ^_^
Even the 80 % is often more than I can say of other RPGs...

Atmosphere: That's a hard one. It depends. LoD drew me in as much as FFIX and that one drew me in at least as much as the Suikoden ones. I'll pass choosing a favourite her :)

Plot twists: Hmm... Honestly I can't really name one... It's not that they didn't have one, but... More like I can't remember which one had me most impressed with plot twists.
Persona 4 certainly held a surprise that I wouldn't have expected and thanks to avoiding spoiler this was really a WHAT?! WHOHA! Experience. Similar in Persona 3.
I dimly remember there being one RPG that held an evil-doer, that I would have never expected - something that rarely if ever happens to me - but I really can't remember the name of it...