>>38269667No not really, I battled every trainer and wild encounter and ended up with almost all my mons in the 52-56 range. Didn't have any grinding sessions at all. Though a few routes did take me longer to complete which might have resulted in a little more exp than someone who knew what they were doing would have received. Also I didn't have a bird so I ran everywhere. My party was also 5 usable mons with one underleveld HM slave
Only other explanation would be that all of my Pokemon were fast growing. I don't know why our level gap is so large.