I.... Actually find myself agreeing with this.
It wasn't the FeMC made her route enjoyable, it was the fact that the altered and new slinks. They gave the rest of the cast much more personality that the original did. It's hard to relate to silent MCs. Ironic on how they are supposed to be player inserts
Now, I know that most of the new links are romantic, I'm not exactly keen on Persona romance writings (especially high school romance). But they sure did offer a lot of insights to the p3s cast.
A shame that you can't romance Junpei though, I found his personality to be the dynamic and robust.
There is a handful of romances in FeMC's unique SLinks, but most of them? Not so much. You need to aggressively pursue Akihiko because he's dense, Shinjiro's romance literally requires you to talk to him
after his SLink is finished. Ryoji and Ken both have a moment where you can de-escalate any romance before it goes any further. Only Ryoji's has a specific moment where you straight up turn down a confession.
And apologies to those who ship it, there are no romantic implications in Saori or Rio's SLinks. And Junpei speaks for himself.
I'd also argue that FeMC's quirky and fun dialogue choices did a lot to distinguish the 'feel' of her character as opposed to the MaleMC's more subdued and occasionally callous dialogue. And I think it's a little disingenuous to take the new/differentiated SLinks completely in isolation with FeMC's different attitude and gender. A lot of what happens in them and the connections that are made is directly associated to that. Do you think Saori's SLink would be remotely the same if you were a guy? Rio's? Heck, even Ken and his
creepy association with FeMC and his mother would be different. And of course, Junpei's SLink would be phenomenally different in so many ways. You can't take one and not the other.
I wouldn't argue that FeMC is a 'preferable' way to experience P3 for the first time. It's foremost a supplementary experience and very much written that way, and ensuring that a distinct 'feel' to her character also meant making a handful of thematic compromises in the story. I just can't wrap my brain around thinking it's totally disposable with no quality that could make it worth experiencing if you've already played FES.