What factors do Souls like clones fail at, none ever seem to be able to hit the 10/10 mark and the best Soulsekiro games we have are Black Myth WuKong and Stellar Blade both of which are so easy sometimes you don't need to learn a bosses moveset nor do either try to follow the genre. Why is it that WuKong makes a better Souls game that any Souls clones while being piss easy 90% of the time?

Level design is always an issue even the Nioh series doesn't land it but it can't just be that can it?

I have pinned down another issue with difficulty also, they always try to throw to much at the player, they can never seem to make the games difficult without it feeling cheap and very importantly your game needs to be flawless if you want to do high difficulty and the difficulty and punishment should never exceed the fun factor. Khazan as the most recent example has every boss tuned with a health bar three times that of end game Souls bosses so it's battles of attrition most often, they almost always have elemental status and they do chip damage through your block in a game where your primary defence is parrying and guarding, self healing bosses, summons are useless and to gain them you need to fight a mini boss, just all they can think of the makes things harder without relying solely on great design. Lies of P's latter third suffered the same. Mortal Shell the same. I hear the Lord of The Fallen reboot, the same. But still with Level design and this approach to difficulty it doesn't explain why these games fall so short of the mark or why Black Myth Wukong comes so close compared to these.

Khazan is not reaching greatness despite better combat and QoL features and more refined builds, for some other reason I can't put my finger on. 

I never considered combat in Souls to be that great to start with, nor really its defining feature, so for me it has always been about level design and overall atmosphere, which are top notch, and that's how I judge Soulslikes.

There's a variety of reasons, not just one specific overarching issue that other studios fail to understand. It's often that they take the wrong lessons from FromSoftware's design, whether that's just making the game hard and thinking that's what makes soulsborne games work, or relying too much on one specific gameplay element that was only one aspect in a FromSoftware game. A lot of soulslikes just give the enemies tons of HP and call it a day, like you mentioned, and that rarely works in their favour as the challenge ends up turning into tedium.

One example that I can think of is Nioh's world design being quite dull and fragmented, where each location felt completely separate from each other rather than part of the same world. Sometimes, however, the problem can simply be a limited budget, like with Asterigos: Curse of the Stars. It has some nice ideas and does pretty well within its limitations, but you can definitely see that they were working with a lot of constraints.

Lies of P is better than DeS/DS2, though :)

In truth, it's all a matter of taste. Metroidvania-like worlds aren't for everyone. Most gamers would rather have a linear or, even better, open-world experience.

I'm trying to figure it out now while I'm having a session. The elemental effects are a big factor, this was the same as lies of P, it's such a crappy way to add difficulty and feels more annoying than fun. They shouldn't have them in ever areas and every boss. It doesn't feel good, very cheap and not premium but it still doesn't explain why such a fantastic combat system is brought down from the 9/10 Khaxan could be sinces it's doing stuff better than Nioh 2. Whatever it is, it's a shame, this could easily be a Nioh Killer and stand tall amongst FromSoft.

I guess it is indeed better than DS2 but it doesn't take much to achieve that. It has nothing to do with Metroidvania though, Sekiro isn't nor is Elden Ring and the world and map design is ecpceptional in both. It's just level design itself, not even comparing to just Souls, they can never seem to achieve something great. These games always have at least one area that holds it back and can't get it right on all fronts. The void between Lies of P and the weakest Souls games is such a drastic leap. I can't comment on Khazan yet as I'm not even half way through it, it's definitely better than Lies of P but it still has that massive gap for to reason, everything on paper seems like it should hold up to them yet it fails as if FromSoft have some strange magic about it. 

Yeah aside from Sekiro and BB, FS combat is not great, Nioh or Khazan do it better so this only adds to the question of what is going on, and what the x factor is. FromSoft Souls combat is satisfying as all hell despite it not being refined as well as Sekiro, Khazan or StellarBlade. I just don't get it, hence the thread. 

I think if you focus too much on the AA sphere, you’re going to find a lot of pale imitations. In the A space, however, we see lots of great competition: Ender Lilies, Hollow Knight, Salt and Sanctuary, Afterimage, Nine Sols, etc.

Are these as good as the best From Software games? No. But keep in mind From Software has a veritable genius at the helm in Hidetaka Miyazaki.

There are plenty of areas in Dark Souls 1 and 3 that are far from good level design. Same with ER, and it's one of my favorite games of all time.

Oh nice, Asterigos is on sale never heard of it but sentiment looks positive, added to me backlog. 

Yes indeed. They are misinterpreting ehat makes FS games great but what are those Xfactors is the question cause it can't be level design and combat alone. There must be many small reasons like enemy placement (something DS2 screwed up) to the d8fference in enemies along the way to item placement and loads of little details that only FS can seem to put down really well.