That's not true. Bosses do not respawn. Even if you die as you make the killing blow (as one reviewer of the game did).
This is a game that has real consequences, do you kill that guy you just freed? Hmm, if you do, maybe you cut yourself off from something. If you don't, maybe he goes and kills some other NPC. Do you trust him?
These games do away with anything that we might describe as dumbing-down, and then takes a few extra steps after that. It's almost never cheap or unfair, though. If you died, it's because you made a mistake, or you need to experiment with different approaches.
The narrative is almost all conveyed environmentally, it doesn't try to emulate a movie or a book. There is plenty of loot and strategy, but the loot is never stupid or overdone. Figuring out what to equip for what fight, and how to build your character to support your playstyles takes a lot of thought, and there are no respecs.
The actual gameplay is brilliant. It's the best action-tactical combat with swords and spells that I know of. You learn attack patterns, figure out weaknesses, work out which kind of attack a given enemy might be vulnerable to. The game tells you almost none of this, though, you have to work it out for yourself. You will die, and you will learn from it.
The game is save any time, but you can't reload an old save. If you need to quit right now, you will be exactly where you were before when you come back to it. On the other hand, you can't pause, if you want to fiddle with gear and look at your stats, you'd better make sure you're somewhere safe at the time. Almost nowhere is safe, though.
These games are the perfect antidote to all the dumbed down cinematic crap that AAA studios are making these days.