First of all, I just want to say that any version of persona 3 is great due to how remarkable the characters, themes, and story are. While portable has its flaws, it is still a fantastic game with a strong foundation, simply because it includes Kotone, the female protagonist.

I personally recommend playing portable only after playing the male route, because most of the atmosphere of the game is dumbed down to a visual novel style for the PSP. The game loses a lot of it's charm due to this. So I would recommend either playing Persona 3 FES or Persona 3 Reload, then playing portable for the Kotone route, which has enough differences to be worth playing.

As much as I like portable, this port is not the best, so I would recommend 2 mods that enhances the game immensely (there are other QOL mods that are nice, but are not necessary)

Mod 1: P3P QOL Collection
Mod 2: Kotone Cutscene Project

The first Mod has great QOL features, but the main one is the audio. The audio in this port is ROUGH in places, this Mod makes the audio pretty good, especially compared to the base game.

The second Mod makes it so you get actual animated cutscenes when playing as the female route, rather than the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in game engine ones, which restores so much of the FES atmosphere it's almost unbelievable. They fit right in and it's honestly impressive. (If you decide to play the male route in portable, there is also a Mod that puts the FES (male mc) cutscenes in portable so I would also recommend that)

I play this game because i hate myself