>>45773832Adding to this, I think the reason it starts to slow down here is because by the time you beat Norman or shortly thereafter (perhaps by the weather institute), almost your whole party will be fully or nearly-fully evolved, unless you added some desert mons to your party, so all of the exciting little changes to your party pretty much come to a halt by this point, and it's just about leveling up now. You also see a lot less new pokemon in the wild, and a lot more wild pokemon that are just the evolutions of the pokemon you saw before, like linoone, pelipper, nuzleaf/lombre, manectric, etc. All of these factors crop up just as you are entering the longest routes of the game with the tall grass that slows you down, and then the samey water routes, so in my experience I have to push myself to finish the game a bit, where in the first half it feels more effortless.
