Ascension: This game has a horrid snowball problem, where if you happen to hit a "breakpoint" hand at the right time to purchase a card you get an insane advantage. Which might be okay, except that there's no way to control what's out. So one player might hit $8 and have a few mediocre cards to buy, while the next player with $8 gets a card that's basically a cantrip Hunting Grounds. That's the drawback of the entire "middle market" mechanic. With no VP cards, buying expensive cards (With both currencies) is your entire endgame, so the rich tend to get richer, and the poor end up in the gutter. Like monopoly, but with more shuffling.
Star Realms: So if you just make this a VP race, it's basically non-interactive outside of stations. It actually has considerably lower interaction than Dominion. A lot of the center row flaws of Ascension, but the card design is so overwhelmingly bland it is more balanced, but far less interesting.
Thunderstone: So what if Dominion had random events that could do things like "reveal the top 5 cards of your deck, trash all actions that cost $5 or more there"? Wait, that'd be horrible, you say? Well now there's a gazillion action types, so you need "heroes" to play "weapons" and "rations" to give heroes the strength to use "weapons" and "light" to reduce the strength of the monsters and... oh god what an absolute clusterfuck.
Nightfall: Innovative mechanic I like where you need to chain actions, but a lot of time it feels incredibly random. Like you get a 50/50 to leave yellow or green up for your opponent (based on the cards you know are in their deck) and you guess wrong and they can go off. Or the weird way you get your own private reserve of cards. Good playtesting might have made something out of this, but good playtesting it doesn't have.
Eminent Domain: A cool mix of race for the galaxy and dominion. It's definitely a "one more turn" game where you are just always so close when the game ends. The expansions added a lot too, with a variety of ways to win. It's actually very hard to compare to Dominion due to the tableau, it compares better to Race for the Galaxy - I find I like it much more than race, as the deckbuilding adds to the phase picking in a neat way.
Tanto Cuore: So Market and Silver cost the same. Other than that, Dominion clone with nothing to recommend for it, and artwork that guarantees it's an embarrassment.