Chalice Dungeons were FS walking away with money on the table (again!)

Slowly pushing my way through a BL4 run and figured it would be fun to jump into the chalice dungeons once more for some blood gems. What I'm reminded of once more is that despite however incomplete and repetitive people think the chalice dungeons are, the have some of the best game play in BB (outside of the DLC) and they clearly lay down the groundwork for what could have been a sort of generative, rogue-like/lite dungeon crawler.

Sure, they needed more architectural pieces (although there's a surprising amount), and there needs to be more reason to do the dungeons than blood gems and material to unlock the next chalice, but beyond that, some of the most tense gameplay is to be found here, nevermind the sheer mysterious nature of it; something that almost disappears in later FS games.

I'm rather disappointed that since the King's Field games, FS has never really made a true dungeon crawler (although one might argue that all of DS1 is a single dungeon, but I digress). The chalice dungeons scratch that itch in a way that always makes me sad FS never pursued this route, since they feel like the ground work for an entire other IP, but that's clearly never gonna happen now. OTOH I'd argue that this is FS's special power: They come up with great ideas in almost every game they make, then just abandon them in all subsequent games. As usual, go play the chalice dungeons if you haven't; they're weird, creepy, super-stressful, and even better if you play at BL4 ;)