I'd recommend checking out lazyvim, it comes with a bunch of very sensible plugins and you can read through the lazyvim docs (and then click through to individual plugin docs) to discover them and see which ones you want to use.
I recently switched to LazyVim and the default config in their tutorial included all the “extras”. It transformed vim into some kind of hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of an IDE with all sorts of telescoping overlays and pop-ups with a color scheme that fits well with an 8 year old girl’s princess themed birthday party. I actually screamed a little.
Not sure about the "tutorial", but I use lazyvim as base for LSPs, snacks, neo-tree and a theme matching the rest of my desktop and it seems to be fine?
nvim has a lot of "fun" plugins that you wouldn't actually use so I think you might have ran into that.
