I dislike the mixing. I once thought it was novel. Now... not so much.
A huge number of JRPGs, especially, love to throw in swords and guns/lasers/whatever in whatever mix they feel. Always with the swords though...
Personally, I find mixing of swords and guns/more-modern-tech to be a little weak. Swords and magic is cool. Guns and Steampunk is cool. Lasers and Sci-Fi is cool. Mixing the themes up... kinda seems to go hand-in-hand with weak, cookie-cutter plots... so I find it distasteful.
How do other RPG fans feel about this? I know a HUGE number of JRPGs just *cannot* get away from having swords, so... its hard to say "no, this is a story where swords have no place", but... I think they're mistaken. Swords have a place, and its not cool to have them in every freaking game, and on every leading character. Don't get me wrong, swords are beautiful, elegant weapons... but...
I realize that saying that a mix of fantasy and steampunk is "distasteful" is like saying that many JRPGs, like Hayao Miyazaki's films are somehow not cool, as art... I'm not saying that at all. I just find the mixing excessive. The mixing is the norm nowadays, rather than the exception, which makes it boring. I'm not Japanese, so I'm sure I have a different outlook than the typical Japanese gamer, but the RPG scene seems overrun with the cross-time-period style worlds these days... it bleeds into itself in an abhorrent fashion.
Having lasers, etc. as far back as some old WRPGs like Wizardry and Might & Magic was lame too, so the (IMO) weak, suspension-of-disbelief-busting tech-mixing concept certainly isn't limited to JRPGs.
