I watch a lot of cartoons, and occasionally, I find myself watching something a little left of the field. One such cartoon for which I have a guilty pleasure is Miraculous. When I am surfing television channels, if I come across an episode, I stop scrolling. Petit Fabrik, the developer, and publisher, GameMill Entertainment, have delivered ‘Miraculous Paris Under Siege’, an action-adventure button-mashing beat-‘em-up. Much like the television show, Miraculous Paris Under Siege has been made with its target audience in mind, and I’m a sucker for it too.

Those familiar with the television show will enjoy the plot of Miraculous Paris Under Siege, while those unfamiliar are probably not the intended audience – unless they are keen on the action-adventure button-mashing beat-‘em-up genre. In Miraculous Paris Under Siege, you play as Marinette, a young girl who has the power of Miraculous to transform into Ladybug.

When Paris is about to unveil an exhibition, Shadow Moth takes advantage of the robbery of an Egyptian artifact by spreading his dark influence and releasing villains upon the city. Ladybug is not alone in her quest as she is aided by Cat Noir. You can swap between characters at will and allow another player to join in for the local co-op, a nice touch for parents to join their child in the fun.

The controls are basic, consisting of a jump, attack, special attack, dodge, and call for aid. Enemies drop experience as you defeat them, and this can be used to upgrade things like damage, speed, and health, to name a few.

I found the upgrade system to be noticeably lacking, in that even when fully upgraded, enemies died from the same amount of hits, movement speed didn’t seem to increase, and health was never an issue.

Miraculous Paris Under Siege is presented in districts where each villain needs to be defeated to liberate it from Shadow Moth’s influence. Each villain has their theme, like The Bubbler having bouncy bubble platforming and Lady Wi-Fi having teleporting phones. Each district has unique enemies and different layouts, and they can be done in any order.

Platforming can become tiresome as judging distance can be unclear, and the checkpoints can be unforgiving. A child will need help with some sections as even I found them frustrating. The worst part, though, was dealing with the stuttering. Because the districts are so large and have so many enemies, the Nintendo Switch would struggle, creating a stutter that wouldn’t stop until some of the enemies were thinned out.

Being a button-masher beat-‘em-up the combat is flashy with the acrobatics but suffers from having no way to cancel a move. If you start button-mashing away and an enemy starts its attack animation, no amount of mashing the dodge button will cancel your attack.

This is very frustrating because if you have a high-hit combo, which adds additional damage to the enemies, getting hit resets it, lowering your damage output.

Along with the plot, the graphics will be familiar to Miraculous television viewers. Unfortunately, the graphics are blurry, and I can only put this down to the Nintendo Switch’s hardware. Miraculous Paris Under Siege also has bad graphical pop-in and floating items, it would be interesting to see if other platforms suffer this as well. Familiarity will also be found with the voices and music of Miraculous television viewers.

The music does get repetitive, but I did not find it so egregious I had to turn it off, though that could be from my guilty pleasure for the franchise, but the sound effects were not so lucky. The sound effects are repetitive across all districts, enemies, and attacks making them very tedious on the ears.

Miraculous Paris Under Siege is a great game for those wanting more interaction with the franchise. Children will thoroughly enjoy the game but will require assistance in parts. Where a child would be more forgiving of the foibles, I think the asking price for the quality is too high. With a basic gameplay formula that is best consumed in parts, Miraculous Paris Under Siege is a competent button-masher beat-‘em-up that is worth a go provided you’re willing to forgo some quality.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove