Highlights
- Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons are a unique and incredible feat of design that have yet to be replicated in another Soulslike game.
- Unlocking the Chalice Dungeons opens up an entirely new way to play Bloodborne, providing an extra layer of depth and challenge with procedurally generated dungeons.
- The Chalice Dungeons serve as a proof-of-concept for a potential standalone Soulslike roguelite game with procedural generation, and hopefully they make a comeback in a Bloodborne remaster or sequel.
Perhaps no other game in FromSoftware's impressive library is as universally acclaimed as Bloodborne. Even with all of its awards and sales milestones, Elden Ring still had detractors who bemoaned the transition to an open-world format after previous FromSoftware titles featured carefully crafted semi-open spaces that creatively looped in on one another via shortcuts and hidden passages. Nearly 10 years since its release, Bloodborne is still cited by many as the absolute pinnacle of the Soulsborne formula pioneered by FromSoftware. In addition to its gothic-turned-cosmic horror atmosphere, aggressive push-forward combat, and incredible boss design, one of the game's best features is arguably its Chalice Dungeons.
After defeating the Blood Starved Beast, which is notoriously one of Bloodborne's many built-in skill checks, players gain access to the Phtumeru Chalice for 2,500 Blood Echoes. While this point in the game is technically where Chalice Dungeons open up and become available to attempt, they exist as some of the most labyrinthine and complex challenges available to players in an already challenging game. As a satisfying endgame challenge with some procedural generation thrown in for good measure, the Chalice Dungeons are a unique and incredible feat of FromSoftware's design that have yet to be replicated in another Soulslike.
Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons Represent a Game Within the Game
Unlocking Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons opens up an entirely new way to play an already incredible game. Divided up in terms of difficulty by their depth, with 1-floor dungeons being easier than the dangerous 5-floor ones, players can descend into the mysterious ruins below Yarnham at any point provided they have the right chalice to do so. Once in one of the Chalice Dungeons, players navigate through a predetermined order of rooms and face off against various bosses. While even the basic 1-floor dungeons can be incredibly challenging, with greater challenge comes greater reward, including massive amounts of Blood Echoes and gear and items unique to the Chalice Dungeons themselves.
Defeating the last boss of a Chalice Dungeon rewards a Root Chalice, which can be used to generate procedurally generated dungeons for even more variety and replayability. With the added bonus of being able to play Chalice Dungeons in co-op or share procedurally generated dungeons with others via codes, the Chalice Dungeons open up an entire layer of Bloodborne's gameplay that is drastically different from the critical path players take through the main game. With the dungeons themselves being some of the best challenges the game has to offer and them not scaling with NG+, players could potentially spend dozens if not hundreds of hours in them in repeated runs with their favorite builds.
Outside the extra layer of depth and challenge that the Chalice Dungeons provide to Bloodborne, they serve as quite the proof-of-concept for a Soulslike roguelite that uses procedural generation. Procedural generation in a Soulslike is not new, as both Remnant: From The Ashes and Remnant 2 incorporate the mechanic in different ways, but the thought of FromSoftware itself making a Soulsborne title that incorporates both procedural generation and roguelite elements is an enticing prospect. With Chalice Dungeons already acting as a "game within a game" for Bloodborne, it's not hard to imagine how an expanded version of the idea could be its own standalone title.
Given that FromSoftware has traditionally charted its own course for more than 30 years of development history, it's not surprising that many of Bloodborne's best ideas have not been replicated in another one of the studio's titles. Each game that adopts the Soulsborne formula does so with its own unique mechanics and evolution of the original template used in Demons Souls and Dark Souls, so it would be unlike FromSoftware to shoehorn the Chalice Dungeons from Bloodborne into another one of its titles without good reason. Still, with many holding out hope for a Bloodborne remaster or sequel, it goes without saying that the Chalice Dungeons should make a comeback and are one of the best parts of one of FromSoftware's best games.
Bloodborne is available now for PS4.
