I'd counter with "Legend of Grimrock". There's a difficulty, where it is only possible to save at Crystals, rarely deployed through the world.
Playing this way was intense! Waaayyyyy more intense than any fight in DOS.
Except maybe honour, but honour is kind of shitty, because instant perma death in a 100h game, where one wrong mouse click can kill you. So I loose a huge sh*tload af time. While with the above mechanic, I loose maximum few hours, what is somewhat manageable.
The end of Act 1 and act 3 also have a LOT of stuff happening between waypoints which takes some time to deal with.
Even better!
Living on the edge! Last fight, barely survived against that big void voken! Barely made it, Holy crap, That was intense!
And, well, survival mechanics kind of belong to RP, going to hunt, keep Food up, manage your gear, even replace your broken shoes.
Yeah, many people *do* like that.
