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The core problem here seems to be one of communication.
As many have said, EXP Share, as well as other items or options, can be turned on and off, thus they allow the player to dynamically change difficulty. It sounds like the problem is the game isn't setting an extra second aside to say "if you turn this on, you'll have an easier time levelling. If you leave it off, you get to spend more time using your pokemon and levelling them by-hand. You can go into this menu to turn this on of off." In many circles of gamedev, this is considered a central issue devs need to tackle: mechanical/rules transparency.
As for Pokemon, as far as I know, hasn't it had this problem for a LONG time, that of tutorials not explaining everything, or outright withholding important details? I don't see why it's so unreasonable, given how many other things GF is known to screw up, that GF once again messed up by not taking the moment to REALLY make sure what the tutorial says glues it into the player's brain "hey, this isn't necessary."
In fact, one example of a similar idea noted here might be the solution: the auto-play system in newer Mario's. Note how in that situation, the game LETS you lose X times, THEN it asks if you want to do that. Would it be unreasonable for EXP Share etc. to be initially off, then after either blacking out X times, or the game noticing your mons are Y levels lower than the wild mons, the game pulls you aside (metaphorically), then asks you "hey, do you wanna turns these things on to make things go more smoothly?"
It really satisfies both sides of this just fine: Nobody HAS to work to either make the game hard or easy. It just adjusts to your needs.
