As a french canadian, I do see it similarly to American/British English. It’s two dialects of the same language that have evolved separately over 400 years. So of course a lot of idioms and some words are different, but we do understand each other verbally with a bit of effort and easily by text. If someone told you had a parisian accent, then yea they mean you sound like european French.
From my experience that’s fairly accurate. Although I’d say it doesn’t take very long for French people to start understanding our accent, like by the end of a week long trip they’ll understand 95% of it.