Every excuse ya'll give for sandbox can be answered with a gallery. Idk what the point of sandbox AVNs is when galleries are available
No, a gallery is in no way equivalent to a sandbox when it comes to picking and choosing which girls and story-lines you pursue and which you pass on. Any game that gives you significant quantity of real choices will naturally become a sandbox as the linearity of a VN cannot handle the process
there are also many sandboxes with a VN's GUI, but they are still sandboxes.
A good sandbox allows you to pick and choose which characters to pursue
(it is a lot easier to exclude characters in a sandbox) and to also focus on a specific character.
likewise for optional side quests and routes.
Sandbox also handles reworks of old content better in terms of ability to import saves (assuming dev is not completely clueless and incompetent)
It is also easier to playtest individual routes in a larger game.
As dev or testers can start a new game and focus on a specific character while ignoring others to rapidly explore new content.
Same for if you lost your save and want to only play the new content.
I have seen VNs where there were too many waifus where I just couldn't remember who is who because the game went round robin. meaning after a scene with waifu 1, i had to go through a scene with waifus 2 through 50, in order, before I saw waifu 1 again.
Although that is an extreme example and most games do not have 50 waifus.
The easiest thing to do though is just make a kinetic novel. or a visual novel with so few choices it might as well be a kinetic novel.
Bad VNs I have seen come in 3 forms:
1. kinetic novels
2. actually a sandbox with a VN's graphical interface (often but not always happens when you can choose between VN and sandbox and the VN is literally just an overlay over the sandbox. like in the game "simple days")
3. despite how vastly simpler it is to make a VN, dev still manages to fuck up variable tracking severely. (ex: the fate of Irnia)
Whether sandbox or VN is better really depends on the game's production quality
Atrociously bad?
VN is better and there is less opportunities for the dev to fuckup. (ex: much harder for dev to implement pointless grinding in a VN)
mid quality game?
Sandbox is better in my opinion. as it gives more choices and controls.
Good game?
it does not matter. they will both be good.
I see a lot of times where people compare the highest quality VNs to the worst quality sandboxes or vice versa.
To backup their notion that one is better than the other.