Is this the biggest scam in gaming history?
It absolutely destroys the presentation and immersion by turning a full 3D game into a poorly stitched together dollar-store adventure game/VN (outside of dungeons and battles), with the soulful anime cutscenes replaced by actual slideshows. Yes, it's excusable by technical limitations, but that doesn't cancel the fact that it provides a severely inferior experience compared to the original.
It also replaced FES' "The Answer", albeit which some didn't like, with something even more questionable, which is the female route, which instead of following a male-pandering yuri model, is basically just a dollar store otome game. Needless to say, only a woman or a sodomite would have interest in digital experiences of dating men. Additionally it alters the main storyline in bizarre and detrimental ways.
To top it all off, they casualized the game and further butchered the atmosphere by adding accessibility features for intellectually disabled "folx" and niggers, prominently the ability to hijack the other party members during battles. I find it bizarre and quite sad how people don't seem to understand why the developers went out of their way to add AI-controlled party members, and rather treat it like some design oversight or severe bug that needed "fixing".
Now, onto the positives. The only positive thing about this version is its availability and accessibility (not in the being-accessible-to-cripples sense that I mentioned earlier). If you want to play the original game or FES, you need an actual PS2 (which you can get with everything you need to hack it for less than 100$), and you have to play it glued to a TV/monitor, unless you want to deal with the shitshow that PCSX2 is. On the other hand Portable is portable, so you can play it on a PSP or PS Vita, and PSP emulation is good, so you can also emulate it on your phone like a pajeet, or on your FavelaPC if you don't need portability. If you're a good boy who financially supports the starving corporations, this version is the one that got re-released on modern platforms. My theory on why they decided to re-release the inferior version is to make the new and shiny remake look better compared to the "old" Persona 3, because if they decided to port the actual PS2 version, people would see that the remake is a scam (although less so than Portable) and the PS2 version is still great after almost two decades.
So, in conclusion, we can see that the only semi-valid reasons why you would want to play the inferior version of this game is being a ドpoorfag who can't afford a PC from the last 10 years or even a PS2, or being a non-NEET who HAS to play all his games on the go.