Having played Magic Realm for the first time at last years Gathering, I can tell you that, no, it isn't worth it. I was determined to play having owned the game for several years and organized the game before the Gathering started. I had a couple of experienced players to help run the game and even so, combat was remarkably hard to figure out.

I love the potential of the game but the implementation is pretty bad in places. There is a reason that Avalon Hill rated this as one of the most complex games they ever published. I would rank it with ASL for complexity. ASL wins out due to the volume of stuff that it contains, but no one part of it seemed as hard to figure out as parts of MR. (Of course I'm just going on vague memories of ASL, never having actually played, but having read a good chunk of the rules.)

Magic Realm might make a good computer game if the designer could be persuaded to finish all of the additional material that he has. Evidently, what was published is actually a small part of the whole as it was originally envisioned. Without the extra material, it probably isn't deep enough for a good computer game.