Emacs is not a "better vim than vim". That's just absurd.
It's not absurd. It very often does "vim" better, I'm using "vim" here as a verb, apply whatever meaning your heart desires. Even when it comes to some practical text manipulation like I once demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UieaT354GkU - I needed to replace every single occurrence of UUID in the file, generating a new one in the stead.
My friend later did try (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FbnQCNe3YY) to replicate the same thing in Vim.
Of course, it's all subjective - some may like Emacs way, some Vim. But guess what? I'm helping now that friend of mine to learn Doom.
Frankly, I don't even know what you're talking about. Modality is all over Emacs. It was there even before Evil. Some extensions even use modality completely differently - not like in Vim.
As an avid, hard-die Vimmer, I tend to agree when people say "there's no such thing as Vim-emulation", it's either Vim/Neovim or something half-baked.
But Emacs is an utterly different beast here. Emacs can and does vim better than Vim and Neovim. Anyone who argues differently perhaps has never gotten deep enough in either of those muds.