That is a non charitable but fairly accurate way of phrasing it. I would say more accurate would be to say the user interface was completely rethought and much more approachable.
On the other hand, for DF veterans "just replaced the ASCII graphics with sprites and changed some hotkeys" would have been the most charitable thing they could have done. I haven't played the Steam version yet, but my reading of reviews gives me the strong impression that they've changed so much that I will have to approach it as an entirely new game.
