I don't want autosave for that reason because it either makes things too easy or it risks messing things if the game offers many possibilities and some are triggered in a way that's not immediately evident. Anyhow, in most games, either saving is possible only during quiet moments, so you can't divide a big battle in many easy chunks, or if it's left possible it isn't a wise choice anyway, because you could reload in a situation in which you haven't enough time to react. BTW this is a flaw in some games with worlds divided in small parts united by load points, like Thief III mission levels and central hub, or like when going from outdoors to indoors and vice versa in Morrowind, where the part you leave remains frozen at the moment you left it, so if you were escaping, chased by enemies, you could be trapped and being immediately hit by them as soon as you reenter that world section without time to react, dodge or parry their blows, unless there are other load points to reenter it.
In Gothic 1 and 2 you can lure away from large groups a few enemies that don't gang together like others, or that belong to smaller groups inside larger ones, to make the fight a little easier, but it's not always possible, and unless it's a very small group, it's a tactic that must be combined with others to succeed. And saving during melee battle with many enemies is suicide, the strongest ones can kill even medium-high level players with very few hits, particularly skeletons, that have crappy armour level and rusty weapons, but more than make up for that being very skilled and fast with swords, reloading in the middle of a battle would automatically concede them the first hit.
In free or almost free-roaming games, and even more in sandbox games, free saving, possibly with the aforementioned limitation, is the only way possible, save points need at least some order to make players arrive to them in a consistent way, without missing them completely or without unwillingly skipping a previous part they'd have liked to play because some shortcut made them arrive to the save point earlier than they wanted. About this, the only thing I didn't like in the first Tomb Raider was that many levels had points of no return, once gone past them it wasn't possible to complete the exploration of the previous part of the level if it hadn't already been completed, the only way was to play the whole level again from the start.

Yes, people like to brag about how older games are "hard", only it's really just the (thankfully outdated) arcade design - cheap deaths, pattern memorization and etc.

And I felt the same about Mirror's Edge. I really like the concept of the game, but the amount trial-and-error there was kinda maddening. I'm looking forward to the sequel though, hopefully this will be improved

What ruins it for me in RPGs especially - is that if a conversation doesn't go the way you want it to, you can just simplly reload and try again. For example if you fail a speech check in Fallout 3 or you don't have a high enough skill/attribute in Fallout: New Vegas, you can just reload, change your gear, buff yourself and do the conversation again...

When I think about, I think the best system is in Diablo 2 and the Souls series - the game autosaves every few seconds and doesn't support multiple saves, so no second attempts, no quicksave/quickload, every mistake is punished. It adds so much to the experience.

It's incredible how everyone ignored your post. I feel it's the one that makes the most sense.

I just watched a Youtube video by Rich from ReviewTechUSA where he almost &#$@ himself because apparently today's teens can't play NES games very well. That's pretty dumb, but when you look at the comments...

Today's games hold your hand all the time!
Today's games are too easy!
Finishing a game used to mean something!
Today's gamers suck at gaming!
Mainstream games are made for toddlers!

...reminds me of my grandpa talking about how I dress or talk.

(I started gaming in 1996, so I'm not a complete newb either, but I don't look down on younger gamers for not enjoying the games I used to play back then, because I realize that's just nostalgia value and these game suck compared to today's games...)

Well, this is very hardcore. If the game can be finished in different ways even after botching a checkpoint, fine, but getting stuck without remedy and having to start again, even without a true permadeath, would be frustrating. Also, for this to work well, a perfect design is needed for the main quest and subquests and the most important dialogs, because botching important choices due to not getting a subtlety or rushing a delicate decision is challenging, but botching them because there weren't enough infos and clues to decide, or they were spread around so that they could be found more by chance than following a logical thread is frustrating.
Edit: for some reasons I can't explain I feel I could like that system in Souls series, but not in Diablo 2. Are you sure about Diablo 2? I haven't played it, but I played Throne of Darkness that uses its engine and leveling, skills and magic schools system and it had normal free saves and no autosave (or if there was it, it wasn't mandatory and the last save wasn't the only one available).
BTW a single autosave triggered when you're low on health and without ways to escape or time to use a healing potion or spell would be equivalent to permadeath.
OTOH, in racing games, I'm perfectly fine and I consider the right thing not being able to save during a race, or at most, for long ones, being able to autosave just at the point when I suspended playing to continue later, without being able to reload previous favourable saves if after them I committed mistakes, and I'm fine if after a crash the race is over and it can only be started again from the beginning. But it's different, except long rallies, even long endurance races in real time are 24 hours long, and even not allowing reloads except the last one in championships, they can be a dozen races long or little more and they can often be won even not finishing a few races. Edit#2: Or you can end a championship in a position lower than first, but you still ended it, you don't totally lose all you did.

He's not arguing quality. He's arguing skill level. Glass Joe in Punch Out is literally a joke character. I didn't even know you could lose to him until I saw that video. Rich is right; games have gotten way too easy. 

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Yes, Diablo II autosaves every two minutes and the only way to quit the game is a "Save and Exit Game" option. It's a PC game, so there are always workarounds, of course. I would know, Diablo II was the game that made me switch from consoles to PC gaming in 2001... only to switch back to consoles when 7th gen came out.

I wasn't arguing for perma-death, though. Both games have their systems made so that can never get stuck anywhere - The Souls series has items that send you back to to town from anywhere and in Diablo 2 you always spawn in town when you load a save - even if you have the optional perma-death on, you can just pause the game, quit it and reaload it to save yourself from certain death.

The first thing anyone says is "If you don't want to be able to save every few seconds, then just don't", but the game has to be designed for that if it's to be engaging... when I can save but just don't and then die and have to backtrack, it's frustrating instead of encouraging.

Heh, it looks to me that you want all the advantages of all the different systems. 

Anyhow, about frustration: the game I like, with the save system I like, are more frustrating at the beginning, when you're weak and poorly armed, you die quickly and often and even having to replay a small part is still a significant part of the progress already made, but later, being able to not lose all the progress already made makes not frustrating to me having to reload  a previous savegame and replay a part.

This also strongly depends on personal tastes, I prefer to replay some very tricky parts more times in different ways rather than having to replay the whole game if I really don't like a path I took with some wrong choices and without any way to undo them or change their outcome...

...my backlog is already too large for the time I have to play.