What makes it worth it for me is that
(a) Once configured properly, I have a uniform interface to files, regardless of what sort of files they are. This save me time and mental effort.
(b) Emacs is extremely hackable in ways you won't understand for the first year or two, at least. If there's something about its behaviour you don't like, you can run a couple of commands and be taken to the relevant parts of the editor (Lisp) source code. Then you can replace that code (or better, write new code that hooks into it dynamically) with whatever you would like instead.
The latter sounds like a nutty thing to desire, and it's very hard to appreciate it without having used it for a while.