The Sandbar freeze seems to be happening because moving up north and exiting into the previous sandbar map sets the character to a location that is outside of the map boundaries.
Basically, just try moving from Trader's Fort to Raven's House and you should encounter it!
Also, possible feedback: There are some story scenes in the game that are exceptionally dark. In those areas, if you are controlling the player character, since they have the magical lamp thingy gotten at the start of the game, you're able to see a little. However, the story cutscenes doesn't have that effect on other characters so it's barely viewable. A good example is in Shadow Temple's scene with Tiral and Cerbie fighting against intruders.





