Like always it's a second class citizen. I spend a stupid 6 months trying to use emacs like vim. Emacs isn't a text editor. If you need to edit text as a rectangle of characters then you can drop in evil mode. Expecting to use emacs control characters from evil mode it a bit like using Kanji to write English.
Evil (VIM emulation mode in Emacs) does not in any way behave like a second-class citizen. I use evil every single day and it's fantastic.
Emacs is a text editor, yes, among other things.
If anyone is reading this who hasn't tried Emacs, don't let takes like this spoil you giving Emacs a try. Doom Emacs is a fantastic experience to get started but there are more minimal starter kits that give you just evil-mode to start.
I literally said you can use evil mode to edit text.
But trying to use vim inspired motion and editing in other modes is a terrible idea. Just learn how Emacs does it and stop thinking of everything as text. There is usually deeper semantic meaning behind the syntax that an Emacs mode will let you edit directly.
Doomemacs was everything I wanted Neovim to be for me personally. I know it’s a big war on the web, but for some of us evil mode emacs is the easy way to use vim motions.
The only real disadvantage for me is that it’s significantly easier to run Neovim on windows (work).