Vile retains the "finger-feel", if you will, of vi, while adding the
multiple buffer and multiple window features of emacs and other editors. 
It is definitely not a vi clone, in that some substantial stuff is
missing, and the screen doesn't look quite the same.  The things that
you tend to type over and over probably work.  Things done less
frequently, like configuring a startup file, are somewhat (or very,
depending on how ambitious you are) different.  But what matters most is
that one's "muscle memory" does the right thing to the text in front of
you, and that is what vile tries to do for vi users.