IGN's month-long look at the upcoming open-world Sonic game, Sonic Frontiers, continues today with the outlet's hands-on impressions of the game!

Up until now, we've only seen footage of separate aspects of the game — one look at the gameplay, and one look at the combat — but IGN has actually spent some time with the game. Four hours, even! But it's worth noting that IGN's hands-on with the game is from an early build, so there's still plenty to iron out.

The preview points out a few things that fans have noticed, such as pop-in and the floating rails. But there are puzzles to solve and races against the clock where you'll need to improvise within the open environment to win. Sonic Team has said that it prefers the term "Open Zone" when referring to the game, with the "world" more like an open playground.

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In combat, Sonic can dodge attacks, and his homing attack feels much more impactful and powerful. There are also multiple ways to deal with enemies in the game, which should help make gameplay feel a bit more varied. However, while the bosses are impressive, IGN notes these encounters need a bit more work.

Frontiers also introduce an experience system and a skill tree to the Sonic formula. The blue blur accumulates EXP from the enemies he defeats, and he can use this to buy skills from a skill tree. We don't know what this looks like yet, but perhaps it will replace the upgrades that you could find in previous Adventure titles? We're speculating here, but it would make sense!

The impressions seem to be pretty positive overall, with a few niggles that the devs will hopefully have time to smooth out these issues. We'll be seeing more of the game from IGN in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! You can check out the full preview from IGN right here.

Let us know what you think of Sonic Frontiers and this preview in the comments.

[source youtube.com]