How Bloodborne's Unappreciated Chalice Dungeons Paved The Way For Elden Ring

Bloodborne is celebrating its 10-year anniversary today, March 24, 2025. Below, we reexamine the divisive Chalice Dungeons, which have aged more gracefully in light of Elden Ring.

Ten years after release, it's fair to say that Bloodborne is considered one of the greatest PlayStation games of all time. From its nightmarish late-gate dreamscapes to its haunting enemy design, every facet of its Lovecraftian world has been dissected and torn apart by thousands of fawning YouTube videos. Still, there's one aspect of Bloodborne that's considered underwhelming by almost everyone: its Chalice Dungeons, an entire ecosystem of optional procedurally generated content that some players don't even touch.

And while the Chalice Dungeons certainly do have their problems, on balance, they're an innovative addition to the Souls formula that prefigured the sprawling side catacombs and underground gaols of Elden Ring. Considering that all of us Yharnamites are still waiting for a hypothetical Bloodborne 2 with bated breath all these years later, perhaps it's time for us to revisit this underappreciated aspect of the game with fresh eyes. We can approach it not as merely something that's good or bad, but as a system that simply provides more Bloodborne to those of us who still haven't had our fill more than a decade later.

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