Pokémon Pokopia does a great job of making all the mundane, repetitive moments of a life sim and town builder easy and frictionless. Because of this, it was really surprising just how tedious and time-consuming it could still be to collect crops after my gardens had finally finished blooming and were ready for harvest. Now, I’ve found out that there’s a much easier way to do this, though the game doesn’t go out of its way to tell you.
Early on in your first terraformed zone, you’ll meet Scyther, who will teach you how to use the move Cut. This is used to cut through debris and even cut down trees in its powered-up form. I had assumed that using this on materials would just destroy them or break them down, so I was scared to use it on anything that I actually wanted to keep and use.
At first, when you plant beans, tomatoes, or any other crop, it appears as if you have to pick each individual vegetable off the stem by hand. This isn’t difficult, but it certainly takes a lot of time, especially if you’ve got a whole garden to pick. But it turns out you can use Cut to slice through entire patches of a garden, leaving the vegetables themselves unharmed and loose for you to hold down Y and suck them up, Kirby style. A process that used to take several minutes is suddenly done in seconds.
I wrapped up the main story of Pokopia, so now I’m really getting into the terraforming aspects and trying to pretty up my cities, and I’m glad I’m going to actually have a lot of opportunities to put this to use. But damn, I wish I’d realized this dozens of hours of playtime ago.
