Miraculous - Paris Under Siege

I came into this one with zero attachment to the show and left with a pretty clear read on who this is actually for. Paris Under Siege is a licensed action brawler built around Ladybug and Cat Noir, and just about every decision in it points toward a young audience that already loves the cartoon. That is not a knock on its own, but it matters a lot when you are trying to figure out whether to spend money on it. The structure is district-by-district liberation. You pick a zone of Paris, fight through sub-levels packed with akumatized villains from the series, and cap each one with a boss encounter. The villain design is at least thematic: The Bubbler brings bouncy bubble platforming sections, Lady Wi-Fi messes with teleporting hazards. Each character plays differently too. Ladybug leans on yo-yo crowd control and quick repositioning while Cat Noir hits harder with timing-dependent power strikes. Swapping between them on the fly is the game's cleanest mechanic. Traversal has some actual shape to it as well, with rail slides, wall jumps, and swinging across streets keeping movement breezy between fights. There is a light upgrade system covering damage, speed, evade, and assist energy, but do not expect it to meaningfully change how the game feels. Player reports confirm that even a fully upgraded character barely registers the difference in enemy behavior. Here is the problem: the combat underneath all that flash is pure button-mashing with no cancel windows, and the combo system, while it has a multiplier that kicks in after 25 hits, does not add depth so much as it rewards holding the attack button longer. Boss fights telegraph everything with voice lines and have simple patterns. The story is serviceable fan-service, nothing more. At roughly four hours to complete, the game runs out of ideas before it wears out its welcome, which might actually be the kindest thing you can say about it. On PC specifically, the technical state is a concern. Steam community threads report full-screen graphical artifacts that trigger on AMD hardware during combat, save files that refuse to write without running the game in admin mode, dialogue that cuts out mid-scene, and achievements that simply do not unlock. None of these are corner cases. A 52% positive rating on Steam with only 57 reviews is a thin sample, but it is not trending the right direction. The Switch version, which shares the same engine, showed similar performance stutters under enemy load. PC is likely the best version for resolution and frame rate headroom, but it still needs work. Local co-op is the one thing I would genuinely highlight as a reason to buy. Drop-in, drop-out couch play works cleanly, and having a second player juggling enemies while you manage the traversal sections adds a real spark. If you have a kid who watches the show and a second controller, this becomes a very different proposition than grinding through it solo. Solo, the repetition is obvious by the third district. Together, the messiness is part of the fun. If you are a series fan or shopping for a younger player who loves the show, this delivers enough faithful recreation of the characters and world to land. The voice cast from the animation is present, the art style holds up, and the tone is right. For everyone else, the combat ceiling is too low and the PC technical issues are too real to recommend at full price. Fred, Scout Team