I honestly prefer sandboxs to VN. They can be annoying from time to time depending on the game but they usually give a lot more freedom when it comes to pursuing LI and actually feel more like an actual game. VNs often force you to sit through scenes involving characters you don't care about just to get to ones you do. Most issues I have with sandboxes come from grind that the dev choose to put into the game usually feels like the only point is to prevent you from progressing to quickly. And I assume the reason why most people on this site seem to dislike sandbox is because they are blaming bad mechanics on sandbox itself, even though not all sandboxes have grind. Having said that I wouldn't really consider this to be sandbox. The only thing sandbox about this is that you can choose which order to see some of the scenes, but the game is still pretty linear. It takes more than being able to move around a house to be sandbox to me. Especially, since again there is a set order to a lot of the events.
This is basically a VN with some freeroam, but no real benefit to actually doing so.
And that’s precisely the issue most people have. It’s a VN that lets you pretend you’re in a sandbox. In earlier chapters/versions, the sandbox aspect was required and tedious. I don’t remember when it changed, but the “skip time” option wasn’t always there. So you had to say, click the bathroom button every morning when Brenna was in there to advance time and space/ctrl through the dialogue even though there was no new content to see or relationship points to gain.
Which brings me to something more along the lines of your point. A lot of dimwits in here complaining about the “sandbox” aspect now don’t seem to have grasped the fact that they can skip around the day and advance whichever story they want/need to. The only content that it’s possible to miss is the NTR content, which you have to electively avoid. And even if you accidentally choose NTR, it just takes you back and lets you pick the other option.
Though I will say, some of the NTR options are misleading. Like when you’re playing the drinking game with Hunter in Christine’s room. Neither option clearly suggests which of will be the NTR route unless you have one of the mods installed.
