The profile is pretty much the same as the initial. The big difference is its done by a human being rather than a CAA employee (who is saving the world from bad pilots).
Profile (you can imagine) is:
Takeoff, go somewhere else, and do all of the following in any seqeunce, fly on adf, fly on vor, do a precision approach, do a non precision approach (one must be procedural), engine failure on go around, UAs,limited panel, visual landing. Easy
I wonder whether to bother with doing it in the simulator 'cos you need to fly an actual aeroplane to renew the ME. The cost of the ME renewal is almost the same as the IR ME renewal (takes about 10 minutes longer).
Last ME/IR renewalcost me £500 and the last sim renewal was £300 plus £400 for the ME renewal. Take your choice(its more fun doing it for real than sitting in the back of a hangar playing with cornflake boxes).