Yo 1 day late but I got through act 1 mostly by summoning skeletons and it was pretty smooth. After act 1 you don't have many summoner skills that are good for damage except the Raging Spirit buff (summons floating skulls that deal fire damage when you cast fire spells). Using Raging Spirits by itself ends up being the best choice for acts 2 and 3. By act 3 you get access to another good minion, the skeleton reaver, and later in act 1 cruel you get the skeleton brute. These are fairly strong.

If you wanna play summoner it definitely works but be ready to see them die a lot unless you get decent gear that keeps the alive. A sceptre with +1 to level of all minion skills is mandatory as soon as you can find it. Later on (act 2) you will get +2 to level of all minion skills. Also around act 2 it will be possible to find a helmet with +1 minion skills too, but it might be pretty hard to get one. Both of those things will keep your minions alive and dealing decent damage. Then you just grab minion nodes on the tree and they'll be even better. Once you get to cruel difficulty you'll have a minon army.

People are pretty divided on the game so far, it's definitely very difficult which can be polarizing. I'm loving the difficulty personally, but I will definitely agree with dead that it feels too scarce atm. If you don't constantly check the vendors every time you level up, you'll fall behind on gear progression and you won't find much loot on the ground, so the vendors are the key to keeping pace. The game also seems to make it difficult to change your character around significantly; if you're deadset on minions you'll be fine, but I wanted to go cold spells after act 3 and found it nearly impossible to make the transition work since I had few resources to rework my character.