What do you do then?

If the answer is "panic", note that exceptions are superior here, since exceptions let you "panic" without having to litter your code with those calls.

If the answer is some form of "log an error message", exceptions are superior, since you can group multiple related calls into one try-catch block and avoid having to check at the site of each and every call.

If the answer is some form of "return a different error code to your caller", exceptions are superior, because you can catch many different types of exceptions in one try-catch block and re-throw a different exception.