I can’t think of a single game that manages to have enemies correspond to your level rather than area or story progression actually contribute to the game. It just makes trying to get better gear ultimately a pointless task because the enemies get strong at the same rate so you might as well stay weak.
If you count rouge likes, Risk of Rain, FTL, and Dome Keeper all scale well. The last one scales in a weird way that as you unlock more play styles, you get new enemies. And because each play style is unlocked by clearing a stage, it means you got better so the new enemy will add variation to your next playthrough.
I think (I could be misremembering) that Final Fantasy Tactics Advance had scaling for the random battles but not the story missions? I think that was a pretty good system.
Like you could still get to the place where the final boss was a pushover but the battles you did to get to that point remained engaging.
Someone already mentioned Breath of the Wild, that game does it pretty well. Best example I can think of is Alien Isolation, where the AI actually just gets smarter and more resourceful as you unlock new skills and items.
This shit would be dope IRL, though. You walk out of the gym and suddenly everyone in the world’s biceps are a little bit bigger.
that would suck. Why even exercise? someone else who wants to do it will do it and make you stronger. also that would mean every single person is your enemy.
It is implemented decently in Final Fantasy 8. The enemies scale with the average level of your party and add spells and item drops as you level up.
It doesn’t account for your abilities, equipment, GF/summon levels, or the magic junctioned to your party, though. So while the enemies get tougher, you can still absolutely wreck them as the game progresses.
There are low-level runs of people beating the game at the lowest level possible by avoiding EXP. You can petrify enemies, turn them into cards, or have guest members of the parties gain EXP to win battles instead.
