Don't get me wrong, some C&C in an RPG is great and shows some effort and imagination has gone into the game, just like having a few nice puzzles does the same thing, but if the entire RPG was just about puzzles? Not so much.
You're right, the Youtube vids can't express the C&C very well. But that's the thing about C&C, it's only relevant if you replay the game, it has no (real) meaning for a single play-through other than the usual illusion of choice. Only by replaying the game can you get any sense of how interesting or deep the C&C is.
So judging the quality of a C&C heavy RPG would need to, firstly, be judged on whether you actually wanted to replay it and then only secondly on whether the C&C was any good or not. I get a common impression that the game is quite off-putting on the first run and the amount of people who can bare the initial run and then go back for more is quite small (but, obviously, very vocal).
As has been said, the game is quite short, especially when you cut-out the intro stuff, and this is, again, a restriction of the C&C heavy genre, in that in order to create replayability you can't really be burning people out on 60-100 hour epics, which is more what RPGs are traditionally about. Having a short game with tuns of C&C is verging on the roguelike from that perspective.
I'm not trying to diss the game for the sake of it, I genuinely find it concerning that this mag seems to think AP is the right thing to point the industry towards with it's "BESTEST BEST" approach, rather than just a regular "it's not so bad" retrospective. If AP is what RPG makers are supposed to aspire to, I'm out-o-here...