I've been playing Dwarf Fortress II the last couple of days. I couldn't stand it the first couple of times. Too slow, didn't understand what was happening, hated the interface, absolutely retarded graphics :p but I kept giving it another chance because all the cool kids like it and I want to be just like them some day. And now It's really starting to grow on me.
I think I'm on my 5th fortress. I'm not sure how it happened, but apparently I upset a local goblin kingdom and they've responded by repeatedly trying to exterminate my dwarven race. I used to have almost 50 dwarven kind. Now I'm stuck with a Sheriff and about 6 lame and comatose brothers and my fortress is utterly foul with gases from the all the corpses lying about. The good news is about six migrants were stupid enough to come to my fortress about a week after the attack, so I think I can pick up the pieces and move on. I've got to figure out a better way to defend my fort entrance, though.
It has a 2x3 set of up/down staircases that I think I'm going to knock out. I originally put them in thinking the wagon traders would be interested in bringing their wagons down those steps, but apparentlly that wasn't going to work so I channeled out a ramp instead. The thing that worries me the most is that my sherriff is really stressed out and depressed and I'm afraid he'll jump into a lake soon like so many others. Although, that would be better than the last guy who went batshit crazy from working all alone in the mines and tried to slit everyone's throats. And naturally he does this right after a massive goblin siege when my people were already pissed off about being drafted the first time.
I never thought randomly generated characters could be very compelling, but I think my heart just broke in two when I found out that my first suicidal dwarf jumped in a lake because his wife miscarried their first child. It just pissed me off when I lost a good miner with the next jumper, though :p