I started a playthrough on this game recently, with the restrictions that I couldn’t deliberately level grind- I could only fight trainers and any wild pokemon I happened to come across when traveling from one area to the next.

I found that my team’s levels stayed consistent, hovering just underneath the levels of the gym leaders and the rocket executive as I played, much like any other pokemon game. I found later, I only ended up breaking my “no grinding rule” to level up a very low-leveled pokemon I had went back to capture just before the 8th gym. This was nothing new, as I had encountered a similar issue in every single other pokemon game I had played. Levels stayed consistent throughout the game, even once the nonlinearity from Ecruteak onward came into play.

TL;DR level curve meme isn’t a complaint, it scales normally like any other pokemon game.

Maybe they changed how EXP works for HGSS and that’s what people are talking about. Idk.