Argh! This game is hard!

Quite a bit of helpful advice already, but as one other person mentioned. For learning the game, Prophecies is the best route to go. For a noob, the general recommendation is to go to Nightfall first to grab enough heroes to round out an 8-man party, then jump ship to Tyria (Prophecies). Though both Tyria and Cantha were released prior to heroes (and thus easier to manage with Heroes), Cantha is still much tougher in terms of foes than Prophecies is.

As already recommended, upgrade your armor to max level and add runes/insignias based on your build. Heroes' armor upgrades with their level, so make sure you get them to level 20 ASAP - they gain XP quicker when they are below your character's level, so ensure you are maxing XP gain with Scrolls.

My last point of advice to add - make sure you have a Minion Master in your party (Olias). Having Minions provides a very helpful meat shield for yourself and your heroes as most AI foes will end up targeting minions and spirits over other party members due to the reasons previously stated by others.

Hanok

I have a sneaking suspicion what you read was a Hall of Monuments guide, not a general gameplay guide. There are lots of guides to filling your Hall of Monuments (HoM) right now, but you don't need to be concerned with that at all.

The best experience as far as the game itself goes would be to play through in chronological order: Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North. Prophecies is very large and progression is a lot slower, which is a great boon to new players. Always look for armor vendors until you get max armor, at which point they are cosmetic.

And above all, this is a more strategic game than many. Your skills and skills for your heroes are incredibly vital in winning. Experimentation is key.

Most guides these days are about getting things done as fast as possible (often for the purpose of farming items or grinding titles), and are for players who are at least experienced enough to have beaten a campaign or two on their own. For the most part the best guide is the game itself, if you follow it and keep looking for ways to improve your character there is very little that can go wrong.

I highly recommend against using guides of any sort other than to look up skill descriptions/elite skill locations/how basic game mechanics work, possibly also checking a mission or quest page if something specific is giving you trouble. Anything else will quickly ruin the game. I could easily give you a rather brief list of things to do that will make the entire NM and 90% of HM a cakewalk, but that will also skip you over the fun parts of the game and leave you with nothing left to do but farm and title grind.

The only useful advice I think you have gotten from the guides was to get heroes from Nightfall and EotN. After you finished that you should have started ignoring everything else and gone back to play the campaigns normally. If you want the easiest time, Prophecies is the first and easiest campaign. Nightfall and Factions are both somewhat harder, with Nightfall having a significantly more difficult end game while Factions has a much harsher difficulty curve that pulls out some harsh areas as soon as you get to the continent. EotN has the hardest normal campaign of all 4, and is intended to be played after the other campaigns.

Yeah, "aggro" tactics are the biggest joke ever.

I can't agree with this advice.

First, the OP is a ritualist. There are no rit skills available in Prophecies, so a return to Factions or NF would be necessary when he reaches the point in Tyria where having an elite is a really, really good idea. He would then have to play enough of Factions or NF to reach one of the decent elites, which are pretty deep in the campaign.

Second, by the time he gets enough heroes in Nightfall, he'll already be to Vabbi or nearly so. It doesn't seem to make sense to jump to a level 12 area after having been through a level 20 area. How much is there to learn at that point from all the mid-level foes between LA and the Crystal Desert? One might as well just continue with Nightfall having gotten that far.

It occurs to me that you may have your hero's aggression level still at the default - to fight. Y'see, there are three levels of aggression that you can set your heroes to - fight, guard, and avoid combat. In Fight, heroes are apt to go wandering halfway across the map, seeking out new mobs to attack. This is usually a bad thing, actually; they can aggro far more than you're prepared to deal with. Fight is the default setting for Warrior and Dervish heroes, as I recall, and you don't want that.
In Guard, they'll stick closer to you (and their flags), while still attacking foes that you've called, or are within the aggro bubble. That's my preferred mode for all "combatant" heroes.
Avoid Combat is pretty much what it says - the hero won't attack, or cast damaging spells on an enemy. It's useful in some situations for all heroes, and some like to set support heroes on that mode (healers and such).
Here's the Wiki page on hero behaviour.
More generally, I'd agree with most of the rest, and advise you to stay out of Eye of the North until you've gotten more experience. Finish a campaign with at least one character before tackling that.
For that matter, you may want to start with a 'simpler' character than a Rit - an Elementalist or a Warrior. There's depths to both, but it's perfectly possible to play them simply and still succeed.
Good luck, and don't forget to have fun!

Yeah, I was still thinking of the 3 hero max limit and rounding out with the henchies, in which case, just finishing Istan would be enough. Regardless, since the OP already gained the starter heroes from both campaigns, the best bet now is to head of to Tyria for leveling and skills - since iirc there are still several quests in the Proph storyline at that point that offer skill rewards.

At the very least, follow the Proph storyline up to and including ascension in the desert. By that time, enough knowledge and skill would be gained to make the mainlands of both Cantha and Elona a bit more easier to handle.

Hanok

As BrettM already pointed out, there's absolutely no skills there for him as he's a ritualist. So he would only being gaining skills for his secondary with quests and he wouldn't have elites avalaible to cap.
While I'm generally the first one to say prophecies should always be the campaign of choice for a start, it's not the case when the player didn't choose a core class (and choosing a non core class to start with is a bad idea imho but now we're discussing at things done).

Well, for the first playthrough, Prophecies is still a great idea since you get a lot of skills as quest rewards, saving you thousands of gold in the future, since it unlocks those skills for your heroes/later players.

Of course, unlocking via PvP is faster, but less background integrated.

Still, generally, it's best to finish off your initial campaign no matter what.