I'd also say FES is the way to go.
A lot of the important information has been covered, so I guess I'll just add a few differences in the combat, since you are familiar with P4.
For one thing, P3 and P4 share a lot of the same enemies, but those enemies tend to have different weaknesses between the two games. So forget everything you know from P4 about who is weak to what!
Next, to be honest, most of the systems in P3 are less forgiving than they are in P4, but they're also perhaps more exploitable. One key difference to note is that in P3, when anybody is knocked down and they aren't hit again before their turn, they spend their turn standing up and can't perform any combat actions or anything. So this can be really bad if it happens to you, but it can also be useful against a strong enemy. For example, it's possible to basically prevent an enemy from attacking if you knock it down, opt out of the All-Out attack and don't hit it again before its turn.
Since the knockdowns are less powerful in P4, it's also a little less strict about the systems surrounding that. For example, I seem to recall that in P4, if you do an elemental spell to all and it either misses some enemies or some of the enemies aren't weak to that, you'll still get a One More! free turn, because you at least knocked down one enemy. You only get the One More! in P3 if you knock down everything you targeted. This could totally be wrong, but I want to also say that hitting a downed enemy in P4 with its weakness didn't stand it back up again, which it absolutely will in P3, since any damage will put an enemy/party member back on their feet. So it's a bit more finnicky, but then the rewards can be bigger too.
The AI controlled party members can be really rough sometimes, and it's lacking some of the quality of life changes made in P4, like the quick travel menu and stuff, but I do also prefer it to P4. I hope you enjoy it!
Oh and I second the idea of playing on an emulator, if that's an option. It can do solid 60fps on a pretty average PC and if you crank up the internal rendering resolution, it looks really clean. Best way to play the game, in my opinion.
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