Kant's critique of pure reason is 800 pages long??, What takes 800 pages to elaborate on?...

The Prolegomena is pretty confusing to someone not already steeped in the debates of the time, cuz it seems like Kant is pulling shit out of thin air. But my question is: if you've already studied the Early Moderns, why wouldn't you go ahead and read the first Critique? Kant is a systematic philosopher, so the summary provided in the Prolegomena should not be very persuasive. Plus, the Transcendental Aesthetic is COOL. His Antinomies of Reason are COOL. The way he describes a boat "glitching" up and down a river to refute Hume's global mistrust of causality is COOL. The spanking he gives to Descartes' (and everyone's) ontological proof of God is COOL. If you're invested in the subject matter, Kant's got the nonstop poppop of stainless steel.

It's like a metaphor — I mean a simile: I mean assimilate the ass that's in front of me

Kant being Kant, the summary is probably gonna be 1500 pages

What is the essential Decartes to read?

Really, only the Meditations. The "Discourse" explains his motivation for philosophical doubt (which is also in the Meditations). His "Principles" are filled with minutiae that's interesting only if you really like Descartes. You might want to read "Conversation with Burman" to understand contemporary, charitable critiques of Descartes' philosophy. The more Descartes explains his terms, the more self-contradictory and absurd his philosophy becomes. You should be trying to pick out some vast inconsistencies on your first read of the Meditations.

If you go straight onto Locke's "Essay" after, he attacks Descartes plenty, but with a shit-ton of sophistry. (My favorite:
>But yet, if after all this any one will be so sceptical as to distrust his senses, and to affirm that all we see and hear, feel and taste, think and do, during our whole being, is but the series and deluding appearances of a long dream, whereof there is no reality; and therefore will question the existence of all things, or our knowledge of anything: I must desire him to consider, that, if all be a dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the question, and so it is not much matter that a waking man should answer him. But yet, if he pleases, he may dream that I make him this answer...
or, in other words, "You think that life is but a dream? Well, dream this, motherfucker!")

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is it really? it didn't seem that long when i read it

my bad I didnt explain myself better: What I meant is Kant's work, not philosophy in general. So far I've read most of Plato's dialogues, the main core of Aristotle's work, Plotinus' enneads, St. Augustine's confessions, Descartes' method and the meditations. I already bought Hume's main work and a book by Berkeley to get a notion of empiricism. After that Im going to read Spinoza's ethics and maybe Leibniz monadology then Im going to dive into Kant

With that being said, is the critique a good starting point? should I go further after that? My main goal is to read the philosophy's core works up until Heidegger then re-track my steps from Plato and go deeper on what I find interesting.

he was a bored and boring virgin with nothing else to do

critique of pure reason has only 12-15 significant pages

That sounds like a cool project, user. It depends on what you're interested in philosophy. If you don't really care about ethics, but just about metaphysics and epistemology, all you need is the first Critique. Eventually, you can go back and read the Critique of Judgment for a discussion of free will and aesthetics, whenever you feel like it.

I would highly, highly recommend reading Locke's "Essay" before reading anything else. It is long but immensely useful for future studies, for several reasons. First, Berkeley and Hume are directly responding to Locke, so they take much of his theory for granted. It would probably be harder to understand all they're saying without knowing Locke. [Kant, in turn, is responding to Berkeley and Hume.] Second, it is the exemplary text of systematic philosophy in its day, which should get you comfortable with reading the first Critique. Third, Locke absolutely fails in what he sets out to accomplish, but he fails in important ways. If you want to be an active student, you should be able to expose the latent contradictions in his theory (some of which are pretty easy-to-find, since they're so absurd). Sparring with Locke will ultimately train you to take on Berkeley, and Hume, and even Kant — Locke is like a lvl.1 Pixie, while Kant is a lvl.50 Lucifer.

Also, you should definitely read Leibniz's Monadology and maybe go back to Spinoza if you feel like it. Spinoza is cool, but he leads to his own rabbit hole that doesn't seem to fit your project. After Kant, most people do Hegel's "Phenomenology." If you liked Kant and Plato, though, you should read Schopenhauer. After Hegel and his lackeys, most go into Nietzsche and/or Kierk. Kierkegaard is hugely influential on Heidy, Witty, and the existentialists — he's also strongly recommended. Good luck, user!

Thanks a lot man. I was going to skip Locke entirely, but I guess that's not the best way to go at it.
I believe that before I dive into ethics, or anything else really, I should try to tackle both metaphysical and epistemological problems and questions. I probably won't solve anything that isn't solved already but that'll give me enough context to work on any other philosophical situations.
Again, thanks for taking the time to answer, this definitely helps me out a lot.

If you're the same user as your metaphors are hilarious and on point.

It is not very interesting to read him if you live in a place where his ideas are already in practice (a prosperous socium). Also, he wrote his book in Königsberg eating cookies and drinking tea, so what is there much to criticize about him?