Only tried it twice...
...but oh, how rewarding! In my humble opinion, a sim could be used for type rating, IFR training and - best of all - emergency procedures with no worries.
What struck me was two things:
1) The reality feeling. I missed out on a flare in a 412, made it a bit too high, and ended up falling staight down towards the runway striking at 2000 fpm. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. Felt so real...
2) The "un-reality" feeling. The sim is modeled after a specific aircraft. How come they missed (in a 15 megadollar thingy) the proper reaction to tail rotor input at high speeds? If you loose the tail in SAS Flight Academy's 412 sim at 100 kts, the thing starts spinning...
The landing on a ship thing was good, as was the white out conditions. What a training device! I think it could very well be used to do just about anything short of basic flight training.