To answer whether the P1 and the P2 Duo feel like the modern Persona's, I would say that they do not. They share some common themes, but the feel is super different.
The way the older persona games handle characters is different compared to the more modern persona's. There are no S. Links in the older games, and they have less of a spotlight individually. While the characters were pretty well developed for their time, the P1/2 characters feel basic compared to the character in P3/4.
While I have no experience with the P2 remake, I did play P1 to completion. The audio/visual presentation has been updated dramatically. I say Atlus did a pretty good job with updating the game on that department. Just don't expect P3/4 levels of presentation. However, there are some issues with music repetition since the enemy encounter rate is high.
While the P3/4 stories kinda isolated the conflict into somewhere other than Japan (Inside televisions/Tartarus), the older don't do that. From a tone level, you have mass amounts of people freaking out making the older games a bit darker. Instead of shadows you also fight demons in the older games, kinda amplifying why people are freaking out. While there is levity in the older games, you are not gonna have the campy lightheartedness form P4. The older persona's have light shades of SMT: Nocturne if I had to make a comparison.
If you are looking for the light hearted character driven story of the later personas, I wouldn't recommend the older games. Strictly looking at the story, the older personas make for a nice bridge between the later personas and the proper SMT series. The stories are also pretty good in their own right, if you go in with the mindset that those games are very much a product of their time.
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