games

D2R as necromancer?

Etherlords and its sequel. The actual gameplay is pretty much MTG and the character I picked rode around the over world on a giant spider. You can pick them up on GOG for pocket change but are probably on Steam too

Never actually finished the game, but Overlord was a good game, from what I remember, that focused around managing minions and is from 2007, so I assume isn't too hardware demanding.

Masters of Anima was a really fun minion summoning game. It is very similar to overlord style of game play if I recall correctly.

Story was generic but I love the game itself.

There needs to be a distinction between a summoner with like 5 strong minions and a summoner with a trash mob of 30+ cannon fodder.

I have literally the perfect game for you. It's called Boneraiser Minions! It's indie pixel art but it is super fun!

Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. It's almost all summoning.

Also, can't Guild Wars 1 be played offline? The Necromancer in that is all about minioning

Me furiously taking notes.

But yeah, sadly some of my best minion moments have been online-centric games. Some tabletops give that feel, like MtG and some DnD classes if you really tweak your character. My summoner bard was fun, even if it added to already slow games. And remember, summons don't just have to be for combat. I once used Earth Elementals for evidence collection.

Streets of rogue lets you control minions through mob boss, zombie, gorilla, cop, crips, bloods, slavemaster, comedian classes or you can hire npcs for money or use a necromancy book or hypnosis gadget or some other item. 2D pixel art so wouldn't worry about that.

Sacrifice, if you don't mind how early-3D-era it is

Terraria has a summoner role and can run on a toaster

Torchlight 2, as either an Engineer with mechanical minions or an Outlander with shadowlings.

My brain is cooked I thought you meant the Illumination Minions for a second

Neverwinter Nights 1 let's you play classes that summon minions and it's D&D 3rd edition

Path of Achra! There is a ton of build variety, and you can summon a screen full of minions. I also love the generated poems at the start, it's good flavor text.

There is also Rift Wizard 1 and 2, but I had less fun with it.

Obviously different ARPGs like Diablo 2 . Necromancer can have a lot of skellies boning around

In terraria you can play as the summoner class

Pathfinder WOTR

Lots of different builds for different degrees of minions.

Lich mythic path has raising a tonne of undead built in, but classes like druids are also borderline RTS gameplay with the hordes you can pop out with spontaneous summons.

There's one called Sea Salt where you summon various Lovecraftian minions of the deep

While I was looking for games, I found a couple videos of a guy recommending lots of games in which you play as a Necromancer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJC2jAkU5OE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6V7BkV4FNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH3e1fSzTv4

Modded Skyrim pure conjuration mage playthrough

grim dawn has pseudo-pets plus real pets

it is not very demanding however it does have some slight optimization issues. it also has mod support with more pet classes too

The Chanter class in Pillars of Eternity has a boatload of summons that I loved to just spam.

Also if you stretch the "summoner" definition, I love watching my massive peasant army swarm all over the enemy in Mount and Blade Warband (and usually all die)

Pillars of Eternity's Chanter is all about summoning, with the sequel adding more options there as well. You have many different types of Summons, and on the side you also juggle some active spells and buffs as 'Chanter' in this universe is kinda like a 'Bard': their songs and poems is how they summon things.

Evil Genius lol

Though it's online, Path of Exile 1 has a fun necromancer path if you start as a Witch. I never finished the campaign but even then my max horde was like ~50-60 minions running around murdering everything for me.

Not exact sure if this fits your hardware requirements but there's a lot of fun summoning abilities (especially with workshop mods) in Divinity: Original Sin 2.

This is a pretty common feature of traditional roguelikes. Try Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Can you be a little more specific? Just something where you summon minions like Dungeon Keeper?

loop hero is kind of like that if you squint, especially the necromancer character. might check it out.

Multiwinia / Darwinia

Who the hell is standing outside my window yelling "Vampire Survivors Giovanna One Weapon Challenge?" Show yourself, you sadistic coward!

Boneraiser Minions has it in the title, it's kind of like Vampire Survivors except you raise minions to fight for you.