I started with emacs and then eventually found my way to Doom emacs, which is heavily built around evil. I now far prefer the vim bindings of evil. I’d say there’s value trying vanilla emacs first, but then I’d have no reservations diving into something like Doom.
I’d suggest, in order:
1. Do the tutorial
2. Read Mastering Emacs (for some higher level design philosophy stuff)
3. Install Doom