comradegarry: I think level scaling should work fine in The Witcher 3, I always hated to go back to early regions when I got to endgame because the enemies were just worthless trash to slog through rather than any challenge.
BreOl72: I think it was "Two Worlds"
(iirc?) that made that even better:
later in game, when you had evolved into a real badass already, wolves and bandits (
which had been a threat in earlier levels), would quickly try to retreat from attempted attacks, or even ran away, as soon as they saw you coming.
Now, that's what I call believable behaviour of clearly inferior enemies.
Earthbound did that, and rather famously, if you were to initiate combat with such a weaker enemy, the game would just skip the battle and award you the experience outright.
Early Final Fantasy games, specifically 1 and the *original* version (only) of 3, would have low level enemies run from you once battle has started. In fact, one class in FF3, Bard, has an ability that specifically lowered enemy levels so they'd get scared and run away. (Too bad original FF3's Bard was basically useless.) FF2 also has weak enemies running away from you, but I don't think it's based on stats (FF2 has no level stat for players, though enemies have a Rank stat that's comparable to the Challenge Rating stat in Dungeons & Dragons).
In original FF3, it's possible for enemies to try to run away and fail.
FF4 got rid of this mechanic, but there's still one ability a character has that's supposed to make enemies more likely to flee; it doesn't actually have that effect.
FF3's remakes got rid of the mechanic, and that Bard class was completely reworked, with more useful abilities like being able to restore at least 10% of the party's HP at the start of the round without spending any resources.