Adrian_NPC VS BG1NPC

Adrian is great, especially with Jaheira. The two interact so much that he has a different epilogue depending if they're both in the party (and no, they don't romance each other if that's what you're thinking).

Adrian - a rare example of a well-written evil character. He's bent on power, yes, but he's civil, eloquent, and flirtatious at times. Atypical but - I thought - pretty good. Edwin romance - added romantic track for Edwin, a self-centered and sarcastic wizard. Surprisingly touching at points, and genuinely funny at others. Angelo - Angelo is the epitome of a henchman, basically amoral and willing to do the PC's dirty work. Pursuing him romantically is a terrible idea, as he's only too willing to point out. Keldorn - added romantic track for Keldorn, an older paladin with family troubles who's deeply unsure about falling in love again. Kivan. Returning character from BG1. Kivan is a grim ranger bent only on revenge. Lots of angst at first, lots of sweetness down the road. Starts out mostly as friendship + unrequited pining. I haven't played this one in years, but I remember liking it.

Baldur's Gate 2 (You kinda need to play 1 to understand 2, and 1 has mods that add in romances that are then expanded into the second game. The second game does have romances but I'm not a fan of them. Especially the base game, non-Enhanced Version romances. However that site I linked and several others have romance NPC you can download that add dozens of hours to your playthrough.)(I have hundreds of hours in these games just from the mods alone.)

Oh, sorry, I meant the BG1NPC mod, which adds banters, quests, interjections, and romances for all of the original NPCs. I will say that I don't agree with the writers' interpretation of every character, but on the whole it adds a lot of life to BG1, bringing the level of character chatter up to BG2's, so I haven't played without it in a long time.

BG1NPC: banters, romances, and interjections.

If you're expecting the kind of party banter and interjections you got from your listed games, I will suggest the BG1 NPC Project. https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/npcs/bg1npc/ Otherwise a lot of party members will join and then pretty much never speak up again.

BG1NPC - expands BG1 characters, adding banters, quests, and optional romances.

If the quiet party members are a factor for you, then I suggest https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/npcs/bg1npc/ which adds a lot of dialogue and romance and quests to the existing characters and a lot of people won't play without it. Some people think your first playthrough should remain pure and vanilla without mods, but I feel that if you're coming from more modern games, there's nothing wrong with modding them to be what you want.

Yeah, that's definitely a deal breaker, but thankfully, you can easily mod their spawn locations. The Gibberlings3's Tweaks Anthology and BG1 NPC Project have a component to move those NPCs to more convenient locations. Unmodded, you can still spawn them with the CreateCreature cheat.

For BGEE, I would consider the BG1 NPC project a must-have.

I love the two original Baldur's Gate games, but there was almost no character development in the first one. They didn't really introduce romances, party banter, and important personal quests til BGII. The plus side is the Baldur's Gate modding community is huge and wrote all those things into BG1. https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/npcs/bg1npc/

BG1NPC project adds a bunch of quests for existing NPCs, if you haven't played it.