A good sandbox game is fun. Like a puzzle you wonder through finding hints to follow, and advancing through the story for various characters.
A bad sandbox game is hell, with nothing seeming to have any effect on the gamestate, tasks being nothing but repetition without apparent effect, and no map to traverse the story by.
This game is solidly in the latter, with nothing to tell you what you should be doing or how to advance the game, and encounters seemingly at random.
As well, what's there now isn't even really a conversation between characters, just a "do you compliment (y/n)". That's not a story. It's doesn't build up the character or circumstances around them. "do you flirt (y/n)". That's not hot. It's boring.
People that make games like this don't understand what is and isn't fun to do in the game. They're just happy they managed to learn enough about the toolset to get a loop going.
Some will take the criticism and start building fun stuff into it. Many will be upset they put in the effort to learn the tooling, and then found out nobody cares about the tooling, just the gameplay, art, and story.
