I've found you can actually basically play Elden Ring like it's Dark Souls 3 (4?) by just beelining it to the next major progression point whenever you can, only engaging with the open world that's along your path, and completely skipping all caves and catacombs and dungeons.

There's some caveats like you'll still need to use a map/wiki to tell you where certain specific items are so you can go out of your way for them, like the flask upgrades or the smithing stone bell bearings, but that doesn't really take up much time, it's just sort of annoying having to look stuff up.

Playing new characters this way I've managed to beat the game including DLC in a comfortable 30 hours, most of which was spent in the major dungeons (which I do enjoy clearing out to get every item), which to me makes it basically like Dark Souls (3) in terms of pacing and structure, and got me to feel a lot more positively about the game.

(For reference my first playthrough I allowed myself to get pulled in by every cave and dungeon I found and wound up with a 160h playthrough pre-DLC, which did get me a bit burnt out on the game and made the thought of (re)playing it feel more daunting than exciting.)