YMMV / Papa Louie Arcade

• Base-Breaking Character: Half to all the cast of the games is victim to a combination of this and Alternative Character Interpretation, due to most having little personality or development.
  • The shining base-breaker is Quinn, who has two common receptions:
    • Is she a grouchy, absurdly picky Amoral Attorney, or a Jerk with a Heart of Gold?
    • Since the introduction of closers in Taco Mia! (which is also when both were introduced), Quinn is a closer in every game alongside Jojo, but unlike him, some fans think she has no real reason to stay like that because she has no special dynamic or gameplay effect (whereas Jojo has a different order every time he visits and can give a temporary boost in tips if the player serves him well). The closest thing to this reason is her job of lawyer as stated on her flipdeck, despite the fact that many other customers have regular jobs that could put them under similar pressure as her, regardless if they're chefs or something else (with a few even having both, as is the case with James and Doan). Three costumers who were closers (Allan, Akari and Rudy) even became chefs later.
  • Other closers can receive this too. Chester is either liked or hated for his Grumpy Old Man design. Rico is either loved for looking very unique than the others, or disliked due to how Flipline has used him for a good number of consecutive April Fools' Day posts.
  • Willow. Chances are, either you like her or you think she's horrendously overrated for being a Goth.
  • A similar thing can be said for Rudy and Scarlett, who won Papa's Next Chefs 2015 together, even though it was their first time joining.
  • Fat customers are either liked or disliked just because they're fat.
  • Speaking of fat customers, Mayor Mallow can be seen as a man whose unusual stance gives an unappealing impression to someone to the point of being unintentionally uncanny, or who has the most unique character design the series has for that same reason.
  • Non-closer customers who are locals to the place of their debut gameria's restaurant. You either think they have a lot of potential to become good characters on their own, or lazily-made characters serving as customer slot fillers and only preventing more interesting characters, like Big Pauly or Vicky, to attend in Papa's Next Chefs.
  • Hope and Yui are generally liked as fanmade costumers, but they tend to receive backlash when compared to the candidates they won against in their respective Kingsley's Customerpalooza tournaments. For instance Yui, garnered dislike for winning against a male character (Randy) in a close vote on Customerpalooza 2014 (there wouldn't be a male winner until Steven in the 2015 contest).
    • What's more is that neither of them were candidates in at least one Papa's Next Chefs contest, making them closer to customer slot fillers.
  • At the reveal of Whiff, a new customer for Bakeria, fans were separated about his design. Some liked him due to his unique muscular arms that weren't seen in any other customer until then (Cori also has muscular arms, but not to the outstanding extent of Whiff's), while others dislike it for supposedly giving him Jerk Jock vibes (which they consider a stark contrast to his Flipdeck stating that he's a Nice Guy).
  • Duke Gotcha has received dislike from looking like a Corrupt Corporate Executive with a savvy look despite his honest demeanor, but at the same time praised for it.
• Broken Base:
  • When Flipline announced that several characters didn't meet the standards to be a chef are excluded from Papa's Next Chefs, some were upset that it ruins the chance to make interesting characters, like Big Pauly, chefs in the next game.
  • Every time Flipline releases a Flipdeck featuring a character whose personality is far different from what the fandom portrays before can be a little confusing for fans who have been used to said portrayals.
  • Bakeria has received an amount of flak because of the default chefs being Timm and Cecilia. The former is commonly paired up with Quinn by fans, while the latter isn't well-known or liked for them. It has made some fans wonder whether or not Quinn should break her record of being a closer just to become a chef for Timm, or if Timm deserves someone "better" than her.
• Crack Pairing: Very common in this fandom. Some of the stranger ones are Greg/Yippy and Boomer/Akari.
• Demonic Spiders: From the platformer games:
  • The Burgerzilla: it takes 4 hits to kill and has Mercy Invincibility against all attacks except the Ground Pound ability & Boomer's roman candle.
  • A similar thing can be said about the Sundaesaurus, which takes less hits, but makes up for it with an annoying ranged attack after being hit once, having Mercy Invincibility against the Ground Pound ability, and gaining a huge burst of speed after being hit twice.
  • The Kaiser Onions cannot be defeated by jumping on them or using ground pound, as this will cause the player to lose one of their hearts.
  • Bacobars and their sweet counterparts, Swizzlers, due to the fact that you need to jump on them before they can be attacked, and that they're usually placed so that you only have a second to jump.
  • Pepper Jacks will quickly chase you once you get close to them, and they'll jump over obstacles, too. Although they only take one attack to defeat, their high speed makes them tough to hit.
  • Kiwi Gulpers are the sweet counterparts to Pepper Jacks, and they're even worse since they're underwater enemies. Only characters with the swim boost skill can defeat them; everyone else has to swim away from them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • A longtime memetic example is Wally, who's frequently been the subject of memes pertaining to the series ever since around the release of Burgeria, and has been nitpicked at by popular YouTubers who played the games.
  • Willow, who won a chef vote after only being in one game, quickly became a fan favorite due to her appeal as a Goth — though this has morphed her into a Base-Breaking Character as of late.
  • Steven, because he's the first male character to win a Kingsley's Customerpalooza tournament and broke the tension of females always winning Customerpaloozas. Also, his relatively "ordinary" design really is appealing compared to the more egregious outfits of Hope and Yui, the previous winners.
  • Guy Mortadello has gotten a decent amount of fame for being a chef who isn't Papa Louie or a random customer Promoted to Playable, with a proper characterization and backstory of his own. Some want to see him as a customer in a game, outside of his typical role as a recurring Big Bad.
  • Clover has been in two Papa's Next Chefs finals, only to fail both times. She finally became a chef in Papa's Sushiria alongside Matt.
  • Hacky Zak also deserves mention, as he reached the finals in his first Papa's Next Chefs competition, only losing to Official Couple Rudy and Scarlett. He reached the finals again in the 2020 competition, but lost once again against Allan and Akari. He would later go on to win the male chef vote in 2023, alongside Liezel.
  • Speaking of Liezel, she has gotten a lot of attention since her Flipdeck reveal. She has a lot of transgender fans, that she even outvoted long-time fan favorite Tohru in PNC 2023, before winning the female chef vote alongside the aforementioned Hacky Zak.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Many people have agreed that Timm/Quinn is much better than Timm/Cecilia ever since Bakeria came out.
• Game-Breaker: From the platformers:
  • Xandra and Xolo, if anybody, in Papa Louie 2 and Papa Louie 3 respectively. Their X-wands shoot stars that can can kill multiple enemies, they can jump slightly higher then the other playable characters, and the former's gliding can carry her a massive distance.
  • Boomer. Her roman candle can only stun enemies with 1 shot (meaning that it takes 2 shots to kill them), but they aren't affected by the burgerzilla's Mercy Invincibility, so she can take them out quickly(especially since they do normal damage to them without stunning them). She can also glide using her cape.
  • There's also Professor Fitz, who also has the ability to glide with a flying machine. He lobs potions that launch 3 arcing projectiles in 3 directions when they explode, easily defeating small crowds of enemies.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Wally is popular in the Chinese internet, due to the popularity of his Memetic Mutation on Bilibili^note A video website like Youtube but in China, many channels are fond of making failed dishes for Wally just for fun. This behavior has been around for several years, and everyone sees it as a trend.
• Goddamned Bats: Derp enemies from Papa Louie 3 endlessly spawn from boxes and come in three variants: Wildberry (land), Splashberry (underwater), and Cupidberry (air). The most annoying of these are the Cupidberry Derps, which can knock you off of balloon platforms and force you to waste time getting back to them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A fanart shows Nick without his helmet shows him having three pointed hairlines on him. That's exactly the amount he has when he's wearing normal clothes without his helmet.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Many former fans or players of the franchise feel that nothing much has changed in the gamerias outside of the simplistic, repetitive gameplay of cooking food and serving customers through minigames and time management.
• Magnificent Bastard: Papa Louie himself is a brilliant chef who conned his way to building the most successful restaurant chain. Tricking people into working for him and running his restaurants, from holding a contest where the unknown prize is being forced into running his restaurant to advertising a position on an island with 12 people, knowing full well a tourist cruise was on its way. He would often hire people simply down on their luck and do his best to help with their problems. Keeping the profits while his employees build up his restaurants, he still pays a generous wage, and despite most being tricked into it all his employees came to love their jobs. Truly caring for both his employees and his customers, he single handedly fought off an Inter-dimensional invasion to save them, his brilliance loved in one world and feared in another.
• Memetic Mutation: "mayonnaise"^Explanation A gameplay video of Burgeria in which FuPoo, the creator, makes a "hamburger" composed entirely of mayonnaise stacked to the top of the screen for Wally. It's become well-known for summarizing the many antics players can do when stacking food in gamerias. The cherry that tops the hilarity is the incredibly dramatic orchestral music that plays for most of the video.
• Memetic Psychopath: Some people jokingly refer to Papa leaving the workers in charge of each restaurant at the beginning of their job as abusive, with a few getting to the point of calling it a form of slavery.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Most newcomers wouldn't believe that the first game in this series was a food-themed platformer and not a cooking/time management game.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The sound jingles that play in the sequences where you enter a new holiday, unlock a new customer or an ingredient from Cupcakeria onwards are quite catchy.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • Rhonda's flipdeck can be seen as this to anyone who already thought she has something to do with Rico himself before its publication.
  • Cooper keeping his original outfit for the most part in his design from Bakeria onwards has also been considered this for people who, even though they liked the original outift, wanted to see him change his regular clothes. In spite of the fact that this is the same case for most other redesigned characters, only Cooper seems to get this reception.
• Paranoia Fuel: If you have any alarms purchased, but forget to check on them regularly, you could end up starting certain tasks only for an alarm to only just ring off, but you can't exit those tasks either due to your hands being full. This is likely to make you move as fast as possible to finish those tasks and stop your food from getting ruined.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Normally in the gamerias with the "Go for the Gold" badge/sticker, once a customer reaches the gold rank, they won't show up unless there are only a few non-gold customers remaining in order to make it easier to earn said badge. However, starting from Papa's Cupcakeria onward, gold customers will continue to show up if their favorite holiday is ongoing in the in-game calendar, leading to Fake Longevity when trying to achieve gold ranks on every customer. Also, in gamerias with special recipes, gold customers can still appear if they are ordering a special. Thankfully, this particular badge/sticker has not been returned in the more recent games.
  • From Papa's Pastaria onward, Santa will only visit during Christmas, but he is always guaranteed to appear as the first or third customer, even once he reaches gold rank. Because he starts as a silver customer, it makes reaching gold rank with him easy, but it also means that there will be less non-gold customers who have Christmas as their favorite holiday showing up.
  • In Papa's Freezeria, the mixer's booster has a cooldown system where it overheats and breaks the mixer completely for a minute, preventing you from using it until it's fixed. It's especially annoying with the knowledge that this is the only gameria that has the gimmick, while you can use the booster indefinitely in the other games. Tellingly enough, the To Go! and Deluxe versions outright remove the cooldown system and make the booster consistent with those games.
  • The "Freshness" meter for furniture in several of the gamerias from Hot Doggeria onwards, which causes each piece of furniture to gradually lose points in the Waiting Score the more days it's out until you remove them for a day. This causes a problem with furniture set up for seasonal events since you might not have enough money for alternatives and likely have to risk a much lower Waiting Score for a whole day. This system was eventually dropped out in games starting from the To Go! port of Papa's Donuteria onwards.
  • In Slider Scouts, you can and more often than not will receive duplicates of scouts you already have from the Great Slider Shrine when you try to pay for new scouts, which results in your coins being completely wasted.
• Scrappy Weapon: Ivy's weapon in Papa Louie 3, going forward for a little bit, but then just goes straight up for some reason.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The original Papa's Pizzeria is arguably harder than the later Gamerias for numerous reasons, mostly involving its Early-Installment Weirdness. The absence of upgrades makes it harder to get bonuses, but the Cutting Station is likely the hardest part, especially when you have to cut the pizza into eight slices for some of the customers, as your cuts have to be very precise.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • And then Taco Mia! adds closers (a group of set final customers for each day of the week, who demand a better service quality than normal customers) and increases the amount of dexterity required by introducing particle physics to the build station. Still not as much of a spike as Pizzeria to Burgeria was a drop, except for the first in-game week or two.
  • Wingeria takes a step further in the cooking process beyond Pizzeria. While the Fry Station is the relatively easiest phase for following the same non-variable cooking process and time as in other games like Pancakeria and Cupcakeria, you have to set a number of wings for a specific type in each frying slot, with multiple sets usually required for a single customer's order. It segues on to the Sauce Station, where you can get a bit confused as to which wing sets belonged to which order and you have to hit a number that depends on how many wings that set is (unlike the similar mechanics in Freezeria, Taco Mia! HD, Mocharia, etc.). And the Build Station features even more complex layouts than Pizzeria's Cutting Station, wherein your accuracy can potentially slip around, even with the plate upgrades that give you cues for the placement.
  • Sushiria goes even further to the point where some consider it to be the hardest Gameria to date. The Build Station is complex and tough to get a perfect score on, with having to keep track of whether the sushi roll needs to be flipped or not, spreading the food items across evenly, pouring the shakers and sauces, and having to slice the sushi into eight equal pieces. The shakers in particular take a good amount of time to finish pouring, and once you start spreading food items or slicing the sushi, you cannot switch stations, which can be very annoying if a timer goes off in the Cooking Station. Although the Cooking Station and Tea Station are relatively straightforward, the amount of time it takes before you'll need to add vinegar and pour the rice out can feel deceptively short with how long it takes to get through the Build Station, and you'll need good timing on the button to get a perfect score on the Tea Station.
• That One Achievement: "Go for the Gold" requires you to earn gold ranks on all the customers, which amounts to earning 15 stars on each of them. Needless to say, this will take an extremely long time, and even longer in Gamerias with holidays due to customers you already have in the gold rank showing up constantly during their favorite holidays (whereas in the other ones they were at least mostly absent to give way to those who didn't reach the rank yet). Thankfully, this achievement has not returned in the more recent games.
• That One Sidequest: Some of Foodini's minigames can be frustrating to win, especially on the later levels.
  • Breakfast Blast, which first appeared in Pancakeria, is just plain brutal. The minigame plays like a simplified version of Duck Hunt, where you must shoot at pancakes, toasts, or waffles that fly across the screen with a limited amount of ammo. There are two targets per round for five rounds, and the difficulty quickly scales to the point where on level 11 and beyond, you only get two ammo per round on top of having to hit all ten of the targets. This leaves you with absolutely no margin for error if you want to win the last remaining prizes from this minigame, and your character's pet appearing to mock you if you miss any of the targets only adds to the frustration. The minigame was nerfed a bit in Wingeria by giving you four shots for the last four levels, and Foodini shaking his head as a replacement for the pet also makes things a bit less frustrating.
  • Pizza Pachinko has you drop a ball into a field of pizza ingredients that serve as obstacles and try to get it to land into the middle area. There's only one attempt per ticket, the edges of the middle area are slanted away from the goal, and the obstacles can complicate things to a point where some levels can feel downright luck-based.
  • Hallway Hunt can be a deceptively challenging minigame for how seemingly simple the objective is. You'll need to keep track of a certain customer as they move around in the darkness by watching their eyes, then once all the customers have entered the doors, pick the door that said customer entered. The later rounds not only speed up the movement of the customers, but they also have other customers enter the scene, and oftentimes, they will cross paths with the target customer, making it easy to lose track of them. This minigame is especially annoying when trying to get the silver and gold rare prizes, as unlike other minigames which usually cycle through both the lower and higher difficulties, all of the repeat levels will always be on the higher difficulty setting with multiple customers quickly moving around.
  • Freeze Putt is another tough cookie of a minigame. Much like mini-golf, you have to use a putt to get the ball into the hole at the end of an obstacle course of desserts. The arrow guide gets smaller later on, making it harder for you to judge where the ball will end up with each stroke. One mistimed putt can end up leaving you unable to meet the par requirement for the course.
  • Papa's Raceway is a racing minigame that pits you against pairs of opponents in a five-lane course while collecting coins, avoiding obstacles and running through boost panels so that you can go faster than them. Sounds simple, but the opponents in most of the levels can be summed up as The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard at its finest. Some start off at a higher speed than yours, and both opponents in a level can trap you if they decide to hog the lanes adjacent to the one you're in at the moment. If you hit an obstacle or miss a boost panel (which will happen if you get trapped), the opponents will go on to pick all the coins and become too fast to catch up with. The task for winning against the faster opponents is basically aggressively blocking them off first to force them to run into an obstacle early on, lest they quickly overtake you by taking every coin in the way before you can.
  • Fashion Flambe. You'll need to memorize the outfit that your chef or server has, and you only get a few seconds to do so. Then you have around 15 seconds to pick the clothing and accessories that they were wearing. The later rounds require ludicrous levels of memorization with more things to keep track of, especially since some of the clothes look very similar to each other and the accessories are small and easy to forget about. It's not uncommon for players to just cheese the minigame by taking a screenshot of the outfit and using it for an easy win.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Pancakeria is the only Gameria to have an unlockable station, as in that game, the Drink Station is unlocked at Rank 15. The HD and To Go! versions have it unlocked from the start.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • For a while since her debut in Wingeria, Scooter, a female, has been commonly mistaken as male by players due to her masculine name and appearance. Even after Donuteria clarified her gender by featuring her as its female default chef, this confusion still pops up from time to time among those not familiar with the series.
  • Scooter isn't the most egregious example. Freezeria male debutant Gremmie has long hair that covers most of his face, and his name is not one that is traditionally given to babies. This caused a lot of players to mistake him for a woman. His Halloween costume, where he dresses up as Samara from The Ring, does not help.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Thanks to particle physics in the later games, certain food made would produce beautiful visual effects that would almost seem feasible in real-life. Mocharia in particular has a nice simulated effect of syrup colors blending into the different layers of the drinks when they are added into the mixture, something that would not have been possible with the earlier games (see What Could Have Been in Trivia).

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