I started a thread a little while ago about this. I used to spend hours at the archives, reading through parish registers, recognising the same names over and over, spotting newcomers as they arrived in the villages, reading annotations by the clerks etc (a favourite was something along the lines of "this morning a huge conglomeration of larks flew over from the moor"). You could see who was a pauper, who lived in the "big house"; sometimes causes of death would be listed in the register, or there would be a note as to why a marriage didn't go ahead.
Searching online for PR entries is very much quicker but you don't get that feeling of continuity of village life, or that rudimentary understanding of how people lived together. And I think that is quite a big loss.