I read about Cryo Interactive when I was trying to find out more about the Black Moon Chronicles. I guess it's a matter of opinion, but according to the articles I read on Cryo Interactive, the overall consensus was that they were a terrible developer that seemed to have the same type of problems in almost all of their games. In particular, they seemed to think their adventure games were the worst. I have only played Black Moon Chronicles so I can't say too much about their games from actual experience. However, I would question calling some of their games "major hits". They were constantly in financial trouble and I never encountered any references to "major hits" when I was reading about them. Perhaps some of their games more successful in France.

Well, I am old enough to personally remember that time. MegaRace was one of the first "multimedia" games, and Dune was quite popular when it came out. It was somewhat overshadowed by extreme popularity of Dune II, but this doesn't change the fact that it is also a very good game and that many played it.

I wouldn't believe everything one can read online nowadays, especially when it comes to such strong and biased opinions. Saying that Cryo made poor adventure games is a bit like saying that ID made terrible shooters. Cryo changed its direction in the second half of the 90ies and had a few mediocre releases, but this can be said about almost every other game developer.

There is no deep gameplay basically. You'll see soon that it's dragons for the win, with the battles not being varied at all... burn burn burn...

The whole strength of the game is presentation and the IP from the comics basically. I admit to have a soft spot for it however.

On the overall relevance of Cryo, let's remember these were pre Web days and Europe "data" (webpages, etc) is much more fragmented by language. Did you check FR, DE or ES sources? :) If you check conemporary paper magazines you will see Cryo games are given good placement. I basically subscribe to what igrok is saying (just that what constitutes a hit back then is super subjective IMO), and looking back with perspective it's interesting that Cryo like Westwood (Dune II, Kyrandia series) had one feet in adventures and one feet in strategy - genres which do not blend easily. Cryo was more aggressive with hybridizing them, with the above mentioned Dune certainly being a very unique game.

Dragons, huh? Well, I guess I will find out soon enough. Do you remember when dragons become available in the game?

I am also old enough to remember that time. I remember playing Megarace but I never got very far with it because of the controls. As you have already suggested, Megarace and 7th Guest were pioneers in CD FMV games. I think that fact almost guaranteed success for those games.

When it comes to trusting game reviews, I would definitely trust the reviews back then more than I would trust them now. Some game reviews now are already guaranteed to be great even before the game comes out. Even when reviews today mention many flaws with a game they often still give it a perfect score.

Did you play Alone in the Dark when it came out? I bought a sound card just for that game.

Gods no, must have been over twenty years already. My recollection is that the game is super repetitive. But I remember feeling engaged enough at first...

Ah, this game has an amazing soundtrack. I didn't have access to it at that time, but I knew about it from reviews.

Potentially nice... but kept my interest for 5 minutes.

It makes it a lot easier to keep playing with a great soundtrack playing.

Agreed.
Still, the overall was too clunky to last longer.