A Spiritual Successor is a type of sequel that is not part of the same world or story as its predecessor, but is nonetheless considered to be a successor because it shares common themes, styles, and elements. In other words, it’s a sequel “in spirit”.
I was thinking about how Bioshock is considered a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, went down a rabbit hole, and came across this list.
The correct way to read TVTropes is to just absorb the whole page beginning to end na matter if you know the games in question and open any familiar or interesting link on the background to read afterwards.
See you in a couole of years.