It has very begrudgingly forced me to kind of sort of enjoy it maybe just a little. But at the moment, trying to recall it is only giving me the Firefly theme, and that is nice, I'll just enjoy this for a bit.
Personally, I find the main alien characters highly annoying and the little girl singing the song over and over again even more so. And that's before we get into the "none of this actually mattered because there were no actual consequences" ending.
Edit: Not to mention, the exact same "this was all a game and there were no consequences" ending was done so much better in Shore Leave where Kirk still grew as a person despite the fact that he was never in any real danger.
And that's before we get into the "none of this actually mattered because there were no actual consequences" ending.
To me, that doesn't matter as much because the characters weren't aware of that. Sure if it happened every other episode I'd be annoyed - it's like the "it was all a dream" trope ending, in a way. But I don't have issue with it if used sparingly.
I think it was also useful in terms of showing, early on, that Quark does care about people over profit, and signals to the viewer that he is very much a redeemable character, and will have character growth in the future.
Overall I view it as a silly but kinda enjoyable episode. I certainly understand why people wouldn't like it, but I've never really understood why some hate it.
To me, it felt like the episode mattered because you got character development. It's the first time we get to see exactly how Odo and Quark's relationship works, and we also get to see Quark's..."unorthodox" problem solving style, in contrast to how federation weenies go about things.