I actually have Demon Souls on my radar next, after looking into them, that's the one that interests me the most. If I dig that, I'll probably try jumping into Dark Souls again, thanks for the advice!
Demons and Dark Souls are more similar to each other than to Bloodborne (no transforming weapons, more weapons with less differences between then, more build variety, shields, and so on), so if you like one you'll probably like the other.
My first impression of the chalice deal is, it seems rather pointless and not as engaging and fun that's the main story. Does it get better? Otherwise it would be quite a let down after such an awesome game.
I have been playing chalice dungeons in subsequent playthroughs whenever I wanted to boost my levels a bit for the next "story" part, and as long as you play them when your level is appropriate, you're good. The problem is that most people leave them until they're way overleveled the first time, so the first few ones are boring. I'm finding myself liking them more and more the more times I play the game, for some reason.
I ran through the one with Amygdala and got almost 250k, though part of that was dying halfway through and getting my echoes back. And I haven't even touched the depth 5 ones yet.
This is an example of the opposite above. You're not meant to play the depth 4 chalices until well into NG+ (doing so will have the opposite effect, i.e. the first half of NG+ will be boringly easy). Depth 5 are for NG+ endgame or NG++.
Frankly, it seems like everyone (including myself, obviously) ends up playing the chalices very out of sync with their intended levels. The game does a terrible job of nudging players in the right direction about their intended use, and as a consequence they tend to leave them for endgame and then play them all before going into NG+, which means depths 1 and 2 are boring and 4 and 5 are overwhelming. If they were to return, I'd almost advocate for From to break their "no explanations" rule and add some pointers as to when they're meant to be played, or something similar.
