I don't think there is a definitive answer for what a soulslike is, which is fair.

You know, ever since I saw one of my friends - who is still a soulslike fanatic - playing Dark Souls on the OG PS3 back in the day, I have been obsessed with the series and quite frankly, I only dive into it in the recent years. Like everyone else, it just "clicked" and I've spend thousands of hours on From Software catalog.

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After consuming the majority of it, I started to dip my toes into other soulslikes, and that made me realize, what I think of what a soulslike is.

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To me, bonfires, respawning enemies, difficulty or only currency that acts like experience points which can be lost upon death absolutely DOES NOT define it. Those are important aspects, sure, but the missing key point should be the soul of the soulslikes; weapons.

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Let me elaborate; since Demon's Souls, all the From RPG's has this intricate mechanic: your weapon choice determines your build, not the other way around. All the items, equipment, consumables, all complementary of your weapon of choice. And this does not stay there, every weapon is - one way or another - suitable for endgame, I know that the short swords are busted in every one of them, but a broadsword you find in the first 5 minutes of gameplay could be an endgame weapon is the definition of a soulslike.

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But also, the hardest part to actually get it right. This means 100 different weapon making 100 different classes in traditional ARPG's, which is a behemoth task. Still, I expect at least some part of it implemented in the soulslikes, they seem to diverse the build options with adding different mechanics and usually falls really short.

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TLDR: weapon diversity and builds revolving around the weapon of choice is the definitive aspect of a soulslike IMHO, and seemingly the non-From soulslikes are not aware of it / don't bothered to implement.