Had they gone with a better art style then I think the characters would have looked much better. I wasn't fond of how Sonia looked in Resurrection either. But then again those cut scenes could still have been in Beta format and not the final product. Maybe they were testing the limits of the Dreamcast's engine to see how far they could take a realistic design. who knows.
It's the designs themselves, though. Sonia's outfit is along the likes of
Ada Wong's Resident Evil 4 outfit in the sense that it's extremely impractical. Now a little bit of sexuality in a video game doesn't bother me, but Sonia's outfit looks like it was made simply for the point of making her look "sexy" and doesn't end up being a mixture of that and looking cool (while the aforementioned Ada outfit succeeds in doing both, though I much prefer
her alternate costume in the game).
Yeah I think if I was ever to explore the idea of writing out a res story I would do my own thing with it. Only save the very basic concept that was used for the game and make almost everything up from scratch.
Yeah, I'd keep the time travel plot, Victor running away from his destiny, the taking place in 1666, Death riding a horse, Lady Dracula, etc., but make up the rest of the stuff.