The technical complexity got me through a really tough time where I could hide in the world, ascii only on a pavilion convertible laptop. Good times, impenetrable gameplay.
Kitfox (the publisher) did a video with dev and someone new to DF [1] playing it for first time, while it might not be "pick up and go" yet it looked massively more approachable. There is even rudimentary tutorial to set up the basics and a bunch of guides.
Also most of the DF complexity comes organically during gameplay and not all at once - if all you do is set up food source and some bedrooms you already buy yourself a lot of time to fuck around. The discoverability of systems should also be much better
