Sims are a great way to bone up on practice.
That said, simulators, even though they may say they replicate real world flight characteristics, they don't actually do that. Things like random wind gusts, trimming for a plane, even landing in grass vs. on a runway - the sims don't really cover things like that.
Can you learn to fly from them? Heck yes. I put in over 40 hours on Liftoff before ever flying anything, and jumped into FPV flight right out of the gate. I was doing barrel rolls and powerloops my first day. albeit my landings were a little harsh (and still are; when the camera's pointed up at the sky and you have nothing for reference on how close you are to the ground, it happens).
I think what the sim is good for is getting a feel for the sticks. It will help improve muscle memory, give you a good feel of flying; I just feel that as soon as you get the equivalent of 50 feet up in the air, it feels like the plane is at 500 feet up and it's a speck in the sky, and for that, you're not getting an accurate representation of actual flying at the field. But, you get a feeling for it, you get your mind used to one of the hardest things to work with - dealing with "left is right and right is left" when a plane is flying the opposite direction, something a lot of people have an issue with initially when learning to fly.