For Pokemon, I hardly "grind" that much. I'll usually train a bit, beat a gym, beat some trainers, train a bit, beat a gym, etc etc. If a game is bad enough where you're thrown from one part of the plot into the next with a level gap larger than the Grand Canyon, then it's probably bad.
And then there's some games that just are terrible at RPGs. I, for one, find Mario and Luigi RPG (NOT Super Mario RPG, that's a classic) to be some of the most awful RPG games to roam this planet. It's a watered down, boring, shallow RPG with a dumbfuck storyline (I don't expect any storyline too deep from Mario, but SMRPG had a good storyline) that takes all the good RPG elements, slaps them in the face, then makes them have so little value and completely worthless. This was a little off topic, yes, but I just needed to take out my rant on Mario and Luigi RPG and how it ruined the Mario RPG franchise.