izigame.me

As a rather devoted Dwarf Fortress player, this release is actually incredible. The sheer leap in quality and polish from the previous version to this one is actually unfathomable. However, it's not without flaws.
Pros:
-Cool new graphics
-Extremely accessible compared to earlier versions
-More than 2 songs
-Menus are much easier to navigate now
-New user interface is much more organized and visually pleasing
-Mouse support makes several things much simpler
-Integrated support for several quality-of-life DFHack features (Such as automining ores/gems)
-General tedium has been heavily reduced
-Embark screen has been heavily upgraded, and you can embark on mountains now
-The labors menu has been completely overhauled to allow for extremely efficient micromanagement of dwarf labors
-Several menus that previously had their own entire screen are now just windows, making the UI much less suffocating
Cons (these mainly apply to previous DF players):
-Completely removed the option to use ASCII graphics. As someone who played vanilla DF for a long time, I didn't realize how attached I was to the graphical style until the option to use it had been taken away. It feels as though the game has lost a certain amount of it's identity with the complete removal of the ASCII aesthetic.
-Mouse support, while an amazing addition, has sort of overtaken the main method of navigating the game. This has had the unintended side effect of making certain menus way more tedious to use. For instance, when trading, you no longer have the ability to just hold shift+down arrow to select a bunch of items very quickly. You instead now have to individually click the check box next to every single item. Another unfortunate consequence is that (and if I am wrong about this PLEASE tell me) it is now impossible to make mining designation macros, because the in-game macro recorder doesn't record mouse button presses, which means I will have to manually designate my usual giant bedroom layout by hand in every fortress.
-Almost all of the hotkeys have been completely changed. If you were an avid player before, you will quickly become lost if you try to use the hotkeys you've memorized.
-Giving workshops direct designations is much less streamlined now that using the mouse is the main method of selecting menu items. Before, you could designate 10 wooden chairs by just hovering over the workshop and pressing A and then C 10 times. Now, you have to click on the workshop, click on the "Add new task" button, and then click on the search bar and type "chair", or scroll down the list until you find it, then click on it, then repeat that process 10 times. Now it seems the only efficient way of quickly ordering the production of a small amount of items is through work orders.
-The Announcements screen and the Reports screen have been completely removed, replaced by little notifications that pop up on the left side of the screen. In my opinion, the way the game handled announcements previously was much better. The new system would be fine, if not for the fact that once you dismiss the notification associated with the announcement or report, you aren't able to go back later to see things that happened earlier, which you could do with the previous Announcements page, and to a lesser extent the Reports page (Reports only include info from "recent" combat).
I want to be clear: this release is strictly an upgrade. Overall, the game is in a much better place now in terms of it's playability and accessibility. There has never been a better time to play Dwarf Fortress. However more advanced players who have been with the game for a long time may find the new UI and methods of control a bit frustrating.
EDIT: Here's an important addendum that I need to make; after a few more hours of playing, I've realized that the addition of mouse support was actually botched pretty horribly. The new UI looks nice, but there is so much clicking. So much clicking. This wouldn't be an issue for other games, but Dwarf Fortress is the type of game that when you play it, you're probably going to be putting in a few hours in one sitting. This raises a serious issue when there is a single button that you use to do literally everything: repetitive strain. I have put roughly 8 total hours into my first fortress here (a small amount of time by DF standards), and my right index finger is literally just done. If you have issues with RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, you should reconsider buying this game.