no more, this was stupid anyway

Looks like I'll have the first crack at the counter-point! I will start by stating the obvious, that "summoning" extraplanar creatures is not a few idea in history or in fiction, so inheriting some existing rules is not unreasonable. I also am willing to make the assumption for the sake of argument everything in-game is as-is, and not done for time/technical limitations.

Taking a page from DnD, summoning a creature is not the same as teleporting it. When you draw it between planes, it disappears from it's home, and is magically bound to obey orders. If killed, it reappears as it was originally. Not just accepting "because-it's-magic", I would argue they are willing to fight for you because this planar-reflection is without any personal identity.

If you summoned Bob The Druid, maybe he decides to fight for you. Tim The Druid doesn't like you though, so you wasted your time. It makes much more sense that the personality or "soul" is not present. The mind and body appear otherwise intact, they already know how to fight, and have combat-ready bodies. Summoning a druid means you summoned A druid who only knows how to be a druid, not where he came from or why he fights.

Named creatures further support my argument, I think. Why have an actual name, and not just another monster name? And why only one? Loyal lieutenants like Sara Bella would be less effective if summoned, and so they appear on the battlefield in-person. Combat-ready monsters are great, but zealous, steadfast ones are much better. This also explains why Persephone would be distraught if the mother of dragons died. There is only one, and it can't just be copied forever. As for the Firefists, maybe they are just naturally resistant to the process.

The Wizard the player controls can magically pull a bio organic creature from one plane to another depending on how much mana is being accumulated; each creature has a unique backstory. Hero creatures like Sara Bella are major characters of her kind so she has a name and certain in-game personality quirks like a unique voice. The other Brainiacs your Wizard can summon are simply minor characters. Their individual names aren't important.

As far as, questions like "Are these characters copies of the same creature?"

Well, yeah.

When you really think about it, the amount of mana that the Wizard consumes grants them this wonderful ability to 'rubberstamp' an impression of the first creature summoned which would explain why each creature summoned speaks the same, and behaves the same.

This is a war between dueling Wizards. Speaking of which, do a search 'Wizards gameplay' on YouTube and study the game that inspired Sacrifice. When you do, you'll see that Sacrifice is simply a 3D version of Wizards, but expanded with rolling hills, snowy, volcanic, desert and grassy fields.

Heroic creatures - At no point does it show they are summoned. I think it's fair to assume they are unique people, like the wizards, but whether they can be summoned is up in the air actually.

Normal creatures - They've obviously clone-ish for out of game reasons. But in game there are times where they show sentience, awareness, personality, etc. Not just the heroic creatures, but the normals. You can speak with persephones druids in mission 2 to find out what happened to Surtur, or a sylph will inform you that there's a battle ahead and they need your help. In Persephone mission 1 you come across gnomes fighting and break it up. I think to some extent you just have to suspend your disbelief because individual VO, modeling, etc for each copy of a creature to differentiate them was beyond the tech and cash at the time.

What that means for the creatures:

You could argue that summons are pulling people from another location to come fight for us. This wouldn't make much sense though. Teleportation requiring souls is obviously not true, we can teleport from building to building without anything but mana in game. And most importantly, if trolls love persephone they wouldn't likely help you out when you go serve charnel later.

You could argue it's a 3d printer, but that's only half the equation. Creating a body. Even normals have shown personality and thought in game. Individuality even. Sometimes they'll fight each other despite being followers of the same god and not planning to betray.

That really only leaves this:

Summons are "creating people" and filling the shell - After all, our primary resource is souls. We use mana to create the body, we have spells that convert the souls to our side from an enemy side, and we imbue those souls into creatures to fight for us. So we're basically brainwashing + reincarnating the same people over and over. Rather than pulling them to us from another plane, or another location, we gather the souls of the fallen and those from other faiths, we bind them to us (the wizard) to make them do our bidding and see us as right, and then we shove them into whatever body we want them to inhabit to animate it. Some bodies are larger and more powerful, and the soul of a peasant is too weak to fuel it, so we often bind them together and shove in more. It even fits the in game visuals, when a 4 soul creature dies you see 4 souls somehow spiritually bound together rather than 4 separate drops.

Anything else isn't taking into account the very obvious and the very subtle lore drops in game.

Interesting points...

Good to know there are still a few Wizards out there!

:)