I liked playing during the time of Gen 4. It truly felt next gen for the first time. However, I distinctly remember that I didn't enjoy the entire experience.
Most of the main sections kinda felt like a big nothingburger, HP took forever to drain, effects took a long time to play out, slight delays happened every other action. There were also just sections of the map that did fucking nothing. The mountains were mostly bland caves and linear top paths, the middle section cities nobody fucking remembers what goes on over there.
Even as a kid with a surprising amount of patience, I felt a grating feeling in the back of my head, like man, I don't think I ever felt this with Sapphire. I know ppl talk about the long water sections, but at least those water sections had immense amounts of secrets and hidden paths. However, somehow nobody talks about how boring the entire 2/3 end of the game is in Diamond/Pearl. I played Plat so I know how much they speed it up. In fact, the Distortion World is probably the best thing Gamefreak has ever done to improve a game, cuz it had great dialogue, more Cynthia scenes, and probably the most memorable area design in any Pokemon games, despite the fact that most of what you do there is walk. Plat would still be worth playing, but if you look at the footages now, you can still see how fucking slow Plat is. Now imagine the game being 1.5x slower with worse content, and that's DP
"Iwata was awesome" - Mr. Nintendo
https://i.imgur.com/krtFHol.jpg