Would you varifying the review? He says that your combat skills determine weather nor not your attack actually "connect" and the aiming is just part of it.
The Eurogamer review is crap, the reviewer obviously got pissed after a few minutes of sucking and logged. Imo he never gave Darkfall a chance, he just didn't want to. It's not an objective review.
But it's true, if you are not willing to invest some hours in getting used to the game, you will not enjoy Darkfall. If you can't get over getting killed and looted in sometimes hilariously unfair situations (getting roflstomped by a 12 man group while fishing), it's no good for you. Then losing is no fun for you.
To answer your question, your character skills do not determine if you hit someone or not. Your personal aim does and your connection. Only the on-hit damage is based on your character skills, your stats, your weapon and your opponents armor.
Like in I guess every other fps latency is an issue.
People with a ping > 100 will experience ghostings, i.e. melee attacks seemingly going through the opponent without hitting, etc.
As a German I got like 20 ping (EU server is located in Germany) and never had any problems with that.
Archery is like in Mount&Blade. You got a trajectory and so you have to aim high to hit on distance. With a low ping you can get really good with it after a while. I have seen players shooting some poor fellows off their horses over great distances without harming the mounts at all.
Also, every system I've seen where you have to aim successfully at an enemy, and THEN it makes a check, is really just annoying, especially since you can't tell why you missed. At the very least, make it obvious you were blocked.
In Darkfall you can see if you missed(no blood or flash), successfully landed a hit(blood) or got blocked(yellow flash).