Yeah, a guide will say like, "okay, first go to stormveil. To do that you'll have to kill Margit. Go more or less north from the start."

Between the start and Margit is like, easily 5+ hours first time for a decently experienced player. There are tons of caves and miniature dungeons and other cool things to explore. The individual challenges, you're more or less doing yourself. Unless you're watching a video walkthrough. No comment there. Imma let people enjoy their way. Some guides include tips for certain particularly brutal areas, or build ideas of you're struggling, but those are absolutely not required to play the game, and if anything removes some of the sense of satisfaction from overcoming.

Then, there are things like the interactive map. Elden ring is a huge open world. Really all of the souls games are open, non-linear, and thoughtfully connected worlds, but elden ring is the only one of call " open world". If you really want to see just how dense the world is, and how little using a general route guide actually ruins for you, I encourage you to take a gander at it before playing. The world is FUCKING HUGE.

I think one of the coolest things with FS games is, the level of hand holding you get is pretty much what you want to look for. You CAN watch a video walkthrough and follow it step by step, sure. You can read a general route guide to have a bit of bearing. You can just use the interactive map, to uncover things you may not otherwise. And, if you're so inclined, you can raw dog the Panda Between, just you and your own wits.

It's a big open world. You can just wander off and see what you find. Lots of caves and catacombs, but also some big dungeons, a couple swamps, a horrifying lake of rot, a horrible place with giant dogs and birds the birds are worse, a forest with bears, and more. At least two large areas are just completely missable/skippable.

You don't need to "follow a guide" for the bosses. People write them and they can be useful if you get stuck. But, like, you can figure it out. Old man tries to hit you with club. Don't let him do that. Then he pulls out a hammer. Don't let him hit you with that. You can look up the details for like "He takes the hammer out at 60% health, and usually throws a dagger and then jumps" but you don't really need to look that up. You just see it happen. Though sometimes the wiki is useful for like "Is this boss immune to poison?" questions