The "reciprocal" FAA certificate is NOT a major hurdle, and if you're going to the USA anyway, if you do the paperwork right it's easy.
I've never heard before of anyone being asked to get an FAA medical for a reciprocal, and I flew in the USA for many, many years on my reciprocal. You DO need a BFR (now) before you can fly with a shiny new reciprocal (it wasn't that way in the distant days when I got mine).
To be honest, I'd stick with the reciprocal unless you're training in the USA for further ratings - in which case, you'll have to do all the TSA and Visa stuff anyway, and might as well get an unrestricted US certificate to bolt your IR (or whatever) to. I did the FAA PPL after the IR, which caused some confusion in the system (mainly because the examiner was less than keen to do a PPL checkride for someone he'd passed for an IR a couple of days before).