I'm currently only level 8, but I've noticed that everywhere I go, the enemies seem to be fairly equal in strength. Adding to that the fact that the game was designed by Ken Rolston (of Morrowind and Oblivion fame), and it has me wondering if the enemies are scaling to my level.
Do the enemies in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning scale to be fairly close/equal to your level?
From what I have read, the enemies do not scale exactly. Each region has a level range for example the first areas are probably like 1-7 or something. If you are in that region and you are over level 7 then the level of the enemies defaults to the highest. Vice verse if you go into an area where the enemies are all red (which will happen, and gives credit to this theory). Then they will default to their lowest level because you aren't close to matching them. I found this on gamefaqs that might also help you understand.
Unfourtunatley I cannot find anything from the game developers themselves to prove this 100% but I believe this is how it works.
However, the simple fact that you can enter regions that have red names (meaning they are too powerful for you) says that enemies can be a higher level which means they don't exactly scale in a 1:1 sense.
From what I have seen, I find that specific areas DO get harder, but they cap out at a certain level. I loved to go exploring, and I found myself in specific areas that were immensly difficult. I assume from experience it goesl ike this: One area does 1-7, another area might go 8-? and so forth.
As far as I can work out, each level has a range, but the ranges are quite extensive (for example ive found that in Haxhi, all enemies are yellow, bar a couple of 'boss' characters who are orange, until you hit level 12, then they go gray). And because of the choice in where to go in the main quest (Plains of Erathell or Detyre), i'm guessing they're going to have ranges of like 18-30/35. So really, to actually be playing properly and have little chance of defeating enemies, its going to be quite hard. The only thing i can think of that does disrupt the level scaling are the larger enemies, just because of the amount of health they have, and the inabillity to block their attacks effectively at lower levels.
Despite others points, the levels are splitting hairs. At some points, enemies will appear grey and provide over 200 xp while other points an enemy will be yellow and provide 109 xp. They do scale based on area progression and NOT your current level. As the game goes on though, the swarms are a little larger and the enemies definitely become much tougher (on a harder difficulty) so I wouldn't worry about an "easy" game unless you overdo your character.
Amalur is so non-linear, answering such questions becomes difficult.
In Re-Reckoning, very subtle adjustments, centering on the processing of foes based on difficulty setting and a select few other factors, only further made the esoteric facts, more esoteric...
IN A SENSE, YES. In a less globular, more nuanced sense, YES, and also NO; or, NO and YES, trans-rationalistically.
Re-Reckoning has enhanced the verisimilitude and experiential salience by, whilst not totally doing away with the "area-level-cap" bogeyman, further refining the system; VERY HARD difficulty fans shall encounter enemies very realistically mirroring their own skill and time investment, regardless of zone caps... People claiming the game is yet still cheap and lame owing to the zone-cap issue, are simply not playing Re-Re on VERY HARD... Zone caps exist in Re-Reckoning more "organically", setting a limitation to things, basically, to not allow pure chaos for the player, as opposed to limitative restriction or arbitrary interference... The very widely-criticized zone-cap issue is really not that horrendous - play VERY HARD in Re-Reckoning, and it barely even crosses the mind...
The narrative direction of the game is not totally open-ended - every game cannot be a totally open-ended "open world", each game is coherent in its own terms (ideally) - the devs and creators did have a ROUGH sense of where the player should be, at certain times, at certain levels... But the restrictiveness is incredibly LIBERAL. The narrative intelligibility would collapse surreally if the game had not been developed along such lines... I believe the official guide lists the original milieus the player was ROUGHLY, GENTLY indirectly encouraged to explore in a certain LOOSE but existent order, and it is totally comprehensible in terms of narrative of Amalur...
