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Uniquely deep colony sim, 4/5
The simulation is very deep and complex in a way that makes it much less accessible than things like rimworld. Almost every feature requires doing at least a little bit of reading on the wiki to find things like the density of certain types of wood. Soapmaking for example is a four step process that uses three different workstations, each of the workstations having its own skill. The many menus and tile-based graphics dont exactly help with accessibility either, even after a long time of playing it can be difficult to tell what exactly is going on by just looking at it.
This mechanical complexity allows for a lot of interesting little strategies. For example; falling objects have their impact damage simulated by velocity and mass (also in some cases surface area and density and toughness). With the right design you can turn a minecart track into a DIY cannon, launching swarms of high-velocity coins at incoming enemies. You can even turn this towards your own dwarves to train their dodging skill, repeatedly pelting them with coins until they either become master dodgers or die.
You can also make almost anything out of almost any material. A steel axe will chop right through almost anything, but a featherwood axe couldnt kill a fly. Arm your military dwarves with featherwood nerf axes and have them beat a captive goblin to death over the course of like three days and theyll get trained up as if it were real experience. But even THEN the combat is deep enough that your dwarves wont instantly be OP after a few nerf fights, theres still stats like observer, wrestler, biter, shield/armour user, individual strengths/weaknesses, all these little things that contribute to their combat ability beyond hitting and dodging. The combat is complex enough that the adventure mode has an emergent martial arts "system" people call kisat dur.
Every creature in the game has its anatomy simulated down to the eyelids and can be realistically injured. Most fights go normally; The steel-clad AxeDwarf cleaves the elf in twain while a thousand stupid wooden swords bounce off his armour.
But the complexity lets you see a lot of weird lucky hits from both friends and enemies; Like your steel-clad master AxeDwarf getting his geldables ripped off (A REAL THING THAT CAN HAPPEN) by a bird. Or a forgotten beast getting strangled to death by an angry child.

The game is also insanely buggy, probably because of the complexity. Every time i play it's just a countdown to inevitably finding a game-breaking bug that's been ruining peoples fun for the last 20 years. At this point i cant even tell bug from feature.
-anything that can fly will often just stop moving, refusing to leave the map and keeping you from ever seeing any other wildlife again
-soldiers that leave on missions leave one by one and the mission doesnt start until everyone is out. So if one of their war animals is penned or one of the soldiers just decides he would rather do literally anything other than his job, they will spend eternity sitting outside the map. You can not get them back unless you load a save.
-sometimes animals just dont claim nest boxes
-sometimes wall constructions get cancelled for no reason
-sometimes blood stains just last forever, slowly getting larger and larger
-sometimes your dwarf will wear so many crowns that he can't even move, and starves to death in the hallway instead of just taking them off.
The dwarf personality complexity can be a little annoying too. These aren't rimworld pawns with 0-2 personality traits and identical needs to every other pawn. Each dwarf has its own dreams, needs, preferences, relationships. Some want jewelry, some want to make things, some want to argue, fight, drink, get excited, read, learn, some need you to build a church for their religion --of which they are sometimes the sole follower-- so they can pray. You can easily cheer your dwarves up with booze and mist generators but if you dont cater to their needs they start to work less efficiently. Once your fort is populated enough for nobles they start making ridiculous demands like building five platinum tables for their bedroom. If you don't follow their demands they'll order your law enforcement to "hammer" (read: savagely beat to death) one of your dwarves.
You hear a lot about fortresses getting destroyed by goblins and dragons but most of my fortresses have ended because i was just bored of having my game held hostage by my own NPCs. It's probably why most people end up euthanizing their nobles with elaborate traps.
annoying nobles aside, the emotion system can work in your favor. A dwarf who has all of its needs met will be focused, performing its work better and faster. Building the bare minimum will get your dwarves working at normal speed, but building all the little things they want can have them working 40% faster and 50% better.
Even outside of game mechanics it makes for a much more interesting story than the average colony sim. Every single dwarf's little simulated personality will change and develop in response to things happening around it. They can read philosophy, discuss topics with friends, be traumatized by combat, forming permanent memories both good and bad that will effect it for the rest of its life. Every dwarf has its own little emergent story that will likely end by drowning in a tunnel because you ignored a damp stone warning