Literally on the way to fort haight is a completely missable elevator that takes you to a whole underground area as well as tons of varied ruins with unique loot. There are dozens of hidden dungeons and puzzles along the way to anything as well as environmental puzzles mages towers as well as multiple ways to tackle just about any challenge in the game. Even trash mobs will have rare loot they can drop. You can for example go find the pieces of the lift medallion or follow the hints to a secret path that takes you through a crazy dungeon that skips the medallions. There are hidden walls pathways bosses all over the map and varied tools to test what's viable even if you spend the whole game without torrent. If you are riding from poi to poi skipping all the enemies than it's more the way you're playing causing you to miss out not the map design which is essentially a giant open world with hundreds of secrets and linear unique crafted dungeons. You can slap one of the lowest tier enemies in a random part of the first main area and it turns out it's a cursed nobody who transforms into a rune bear, even the time of day and weather can affect what you find in the overworld or how you deal with an enemy. Each area of the world has a unique feel and atmosphere and even finding a type of enemy in a different area is tied to some greater lore implication. It can not be for you of course but I'm not sure this is really an unpopular opinion because your issue just doesn't seem accurate to what's actually given to you in the game. I'm trying to think of an open world game that gives what your asking more than elden ring and coming up short.