So I am trying to figure out if I want FES or P3P. I was pretty sold on Portable because of the battle system and portability. But after watching a couple videos, the visual novel style... is very hard for me to get over. I love the idea behind it, to speed up all the mundane parts. I find that now a days I want short games but I feel lost watching those scenes play out. I looked at the Fes battle system and it seems that Defend is missing and you can only influence your team. I cannot tell how important these things are. Will I be cursing the battle system 30 hours in? will I be bored by it?

P3P have some changes to be more like P4 but the biggest difference is not the combat but the story. P3 FES has The Answer which is an expansion to the story and P3P doesn't have that. On the other hand P3P Lets you play as a girl if you want which changes the game a bit and make it more fun to play again and get another viewpoint. I played both but I played FES long before P3P was out. Either game is good. You can't go wrong either way.

I made it through FES without much suffering over the battle system. Occasionally my teammates would do stupid things during boss battles, but it was a fairly rare occurrence. I'd say that unless you want to see the female version of the P3 story, FES is the one to get.

If I recall correctly, P3P allows you to manually control your whole party as in P4.

As someone who's only ever played P3P I tell you that it made taking the hit of playing Persona 3 after Persona 4 a lot less painful. It sounds like the majority of FES players never used my Persona 3 team because the AI made them in particular do dumb stuff at the most critical moments.

FES is all about manipulating your teammates into doing what you want them to and knowing how to use the limited the commands at your disposal to achieve the desired results. I certainly prefer the the Persona 4 style of direct control, but I enjoyed P3's battles as well.

Go with P3P. Being able to control all your party members does make the battle system better, but the new female MC version is what really makes the difference. The writing for all the social links it changes is light-years better than the original. Plus, Yukiko shows up.

I think the battle system is fine in either one. Since it was designed with ai controlled party members in mind, it's not too bad having them. I do hear its worse depending on which characters you use (Mitsuru), but I just put my whole party on knockdown and never had any trouble. I would recommend FES.

Having played both you will be fine with either, if you are used to P4 then P3P will feel at home. FES might take some time to get used to but it is sufficient enough to do what you want as you progress in the game and get more commands for party members.

As I'm sure you know now but for the battle system it comes down to

FES: Only have control of the Main Character and having A.I. deal with the rest of your party (subjecting you into the occasional really stupid move on their part, Mitsuru's Marin Karin is a well known thing) and having the Fatigue system (you can only go into Tartarus for so long before you and your party become tired and basically useless in battle)

P3P: More like Persona 4, Direct control of all party members as an option (you can have A.I control any of them if you want), Fatigue system removed.

Because I had already played FES I gave P3P a shot because of the inclusion of a Female Main Character and wanted to see the content that was added into it fully knowing that P3P was gimped from a story perspective (having cut scenes taken out with static images in it's place, no 3d environment to navigate outside of Tartarus).

With the changes of the battle system to more reflect Persona 4 I ended up liking P3P much more that FES.

If you can handle the AI teammates, FES is a better game imo. Lacking the actual models for story moments sucks and you miss some of the funniest shit. Also the Answer if pretty good and is cannon so should be played

As others have said, either way you go you're making trade-offs. The presentation aspect of the in-world models (FES) vs. the visual novel character portraits against static backgrounds (P3P) isn't as big a deal as it seems but make no mistake that the FES presentation is superior. On the other hand, most prefer the full-control teammate battle system of P3P, especially those who have experience with P4 or P4G.

It's all about which things are more important to you. I'm unquestionably on the P3P side, mostly because the female MC's story is in almost every way an improvement on the original, and gives greater focus to your teammates by having them make up the core of your school S-Links. Meanwhile, I feel so-so about The Answer, so I don't miss it quite as much.

Again, either way you go, you have to leave some story on the table, since each has meaningful exclusive content. There's no wrong answer, really.