Topic: Why does Sonia get no love by the developers

[Belmont Stakes]

Maria Renard, Yoko and Syfa Belnades, Carrie Fernadez, Charlotte Aulin, Laura, Shanoa. All of these females are playable, all have defeated Dracula

(click to show/hide)

(save for Laura, she made him)

and most if not all are viewed favorably by fans.
So why is it that the one female who can wield the Vampire Killer is basically poo pooed because Iga believed that Legends was an embarrassment? Should have made Resurrection bitches!!!! 

http://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Sonia_Belmont

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Canonically, only Shanoa can be said to have "defeated" Dracula. All the rest were accessories to his defeat but had little to no agency in the actual slaying with the notable exception of Charlotte Aulin. Carrie has her own story mode, but 1) her game is deliberately non canon and 2) her game mode is non canon to the gaiden timeline it's a part of. Reinhardt defeated Dracula in the 64 timeline.

And Laura is even FURTHER removed from canon.

[KaZudra]

On the Contrary, Maria (Saturn) is a JoJo Character.

[Dracula9]

Because she's retconned. End of story.

[AlexCalvo]

Probably because every aspect of the actual story in her game contradicted established continuity.  Or maybe it's that her Belmont origin didn't really explain anything about their origin?  Or maybe it's just that her game was terrible.  More than enough reasons if you ask me.

[Nagumo]

Because the person in charge of the series for 8 years wasn't a fan.

She's not an inherently bad character by the standard of this series, though. She looks cool and is tough, which are the same qualities all the other Belmonts have going for them.

Also, from what I gathered, she originally wasn't supposed to be THE progenitor of the Belmont family. I think most of the resentment of her character stems from that. Since Legends was developed by KCE Nagoya it was already supposed to be a gaiden already. There's a comment by the game's director in Konami magazine that straight up says the game wasn't meant to be connected to the timeline. However, somehow this still ended up happening. Cue IGA removing it again from continuity.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I like Sonia.

But her storyline should be kept separate from the IGA-Canon (which is basically the official Canon), like Nathan Graves, Desmond Belmont, and Reinhardt Schneider.
An even better example, would be Gabriel Belmont and his entire set of games.  They're their own encapsulated universe and timeline.

Think of it as the different incarnations of the X-Men comics, where a remake or retcon, etc. change who and what is being done and when.

In an Universe, Sonia was the one to come after Dracula, armed with the Whip and knowledge passed down from her family.
In yet another Universe, Gabriel Belmont in the 1000's was part of the Brotherhood of Light.
And yet, in another, the normal canonical events, starting with Leon and Rinaldo, happened with slight deviations, resulting in stuff like, for example, the potential loss of Belmonts in the 1800's, cueing EITHER Shanoa's Game, OR Cornell/Reinhardt/Carrie's games.  This one universe is even further twisted by the TimeTraveling demon Galamoth, and his cohort TimeReaper.  The 64 games aren't technically canon but if Cornell made it into Judgment, which is an IGA title, then this can be explained due to the events in that game.

Time Travel, Aeon, Galamoth, TimeReaper, and St.Germaine are the potential reasons for a convoluted timeline in ONE universe, which is the Canon Universe.

[Guy Belmont]

Yeah, this really got me too. Really went off IGA after that for his of lack of professionalism, I mean, you don’t like something, fine, but don’t be an ass about it. And to be fair, his views on women are not all that great, as his whole answer to
Would you make a Castlevania with a female main character? and Don’t you think a female main character is more acceptable? was this little number: It’s possible I guess.
And I’ll just translate that for ya all: “No, I don’t really like girls very much, and my views are widely outdated as there are truckloads of girls who play games in Japan alone, and on the world stage there are thousands. But my small little closed mind, and my lack of doing any real research, has led me to believe that only men play games.
And writing a female is going to be hard as there’s a lot to think about. Like what if she sees blood, as there’s a lot of that in AD/CV – she might have a fainting fit. Or when she’s fighting, she may chip a nail, or mess up her hair – or shock horror, ruin her new dress. And what if there’s a cute vampire hunter, she’ll be too busy talking to her Gal Pals about how  dreamy he is, and not focusing on the task at hand, and might end up being killed. And knowing a girl, she’ll be too busy with makeup and most likely lose the whip. SO yeah, it’s a BIG undertaking. So as I see it, only a man can use the Vampire Killer, so it’s meat and two veg.
But I guess I’m going to have to use a girl at some point in a starring role, but fingers crossed I can put all that off as much as I can.”
There is a List of stuff he's done  that put me off. But this is the main one.
Sonia is a Great Character and had a great game. She is a True Belmondo, and she will always be.

[Ratty]

I like Legends and I like Sonia, and I think both are underrated. Her game was a big step up from The Castlevania Adventure, it just had the misfortune to follow up the fantastic Belmont's Revenge. The gameplay is good, great when not measured against the series standard. I excuse visual shortcomings of it on Konami management sacrificing development time and cartridge space for Super Gameboy gimmicks. All that said, she's non-canon, much as I enjoyed the idea of Trevor being her and Alucard's son. And while she could have been brought into the canon in some interesting ways like the originally gaiden Morris and Lecarde (and by extension the original Dracula story) were, that didn't happen. And now the old timeline is finished except for fan art/efforts and official gambling machines so, eh what can you do.