>>37012362It finally dawned on me why HG/SS feel faster than Platinum despite them both running on the same engine. Honestly there are probably lots of variables, but I think the biggest has to do with the HP bar drain and level differences between the two games.
Everyone who's played Gen II knows the games have a lower level range due to the more open approach to gyms 5-7. This chunk of the main story is essentially capping the CPU pokemon levels to all be approachable as the 5th area to explore (at least not exceeding what you would expect for the 5th gym area). You can see it in the gym leaders as well, with all three of them being in the mid-30s. Meanwhile, Platinum carries a more standard level scale, so for comparison, gyms 5-7 all have increasing levels as you progress since you need to go in order. The difference is noticeable in the early games as well with Gardenia's ace being level 22 while Bugsy's is level 17. Platinum's levels reach higher by the endgame and grow more consistently due to its linear approach and scaling with gyms.
So what do these level differences do for each game's speed? Aside from one-shotting more Pokemon as your team grows stronger during that gym 5-7 level limbo in Johto, all the opponent's pokemon have less health due to being lower leveled. From what I can tell, Gen IV is the only generation of mainline games that have HP drain relative to the total health the Pokemon has (pic related). Health and HP drain speed are inversely proportional; the more they have the slower it goes down, so of course HG/SS feel faster in the battles since you have generally lower level opponents and a large chunk of Johto where the opponent levels don't deviate much due to its open structure.
This may have been totally obvious, but thought I'd share without making a new thread.
>tl;drFaster HP drain speed is inversely proportional to levels in Gen IV's engine
Platinum = Higher levels = Slower HP drain
HG/SS = Lower levels = Faster HP drain
