My Impressions...to the victor goes the SPOILERS!

[PerfectBlue]

I strongly agree with your second point, the respawn system absolutely removes some of the horror from the overall experience. I understand they were trying to avoid trial and error gameplay mechanics, but simply respawning with no penalty is a step in the wrong direction. Perhaps an intermediate between the two can be compromised?

Whenever I stumbled into a situation that I knew I would not be able to escape from, I would just stop moving and accept the inevitable so I could get killed and respawn. This really removed some of the thrill.