I'm seeing much hate for the sandbox in the game and i understand much of it, but for what i read i think you guys are projecting your distaste wrong. The problem is not the sandbox part of the game, yes sometimes sandbox is just an annoying way to try and make the game more dinamic?
Anyways, the problem is not the sandbox, it's just the lack of info and content. There's no problem whatsoever with a well hinted sandbox that highlights where you need to go to progress quest/relationships with each character. It's more grind-y, but not problematic.
Frozen Past has no info whatsoever. You don't know how many events (h-event or otherwise) are available so you don't know if you've reached the end of content; you don't know how to impact the relationship with other characters nor you have much ways of doing so; and there's nearly no new content.
I get that the creator was doing some kind of overhaul, but they need to add the more essential stuff for a sandbox game and remove what is not needed now. Like, why does Emily give you the tour in her house? There's no sandbox there anymore, heck you can't even interact with her house or her and you only have a 'yes or no' choice in basically every "important" interaction with Mom, Emilly or any other character. If the choice is so meaningless, why maintain it? At least make a choice have a short term impact, you can't know what your choice changed IF it changed anything since the game lacks any info about the characters and their gimmicks, which is, by the way, a very big thing in basically any good sandbox
So, my honest opinion? The game seems awesome! The story is very interesting and i really want to know more of the world and what is happening around the MC and other characters. The render are good, there's good sound quality. The game mostly need better interface and more clean information of what is going on and where you need to go, like a 'quest menu' basically.
I won't comment on events and scenes since i don't think that was the goal of this release. I hope next release has more events and interactions/talks with other characters so we get to know them better. Kudos to you and good luck.