Gamespot misses with its review (suprise). Story? Who cares. This is more sandbox and though flawed, it's still a gem.
Does every RPG seriously need to be an interactive novel? I've enjoyed the NWN stories, don't get me wrong, but without more features than running about with one player... it is very hard to get through a game.
The gamespot reviewer goes about saying that it's difficult to fight with the current system, that it's built for one player. Well, yes, if you're controlling six player characters it does take a while to manage a fight, but that's the whole point. Add to that the fact that you typically don't need to so long as you steer your characters well - the AI is actually much better than it ever was before, and so long as you're in a fight to win it at all costs your characters will make the best choices - simply because they choose to lob fireballs at low-level mobs does not mean they're not making good decisions, it just means you've not got a decent enough char to run through the sword coast effectively so you're worried about the next encounter.
Though simple, the trade is effective and fun. The reviewer doesn't even mention caravans, which though they will be waylaid constantly if you're around and encounters are popping out of the woodworks, are at least fun to manage. The encounters do occur at too rapid a pace - even if you can cut through swaths of them, they're annoying and occur so often that graycloaks have a hard time surviving long enough to defend a caravan. That's one reason I've given the game an 8.5 rather than a 9.