Shadow of the Tomb Raider Reaction - Reasonable or Not?

haha so true :)

All reviews [which contain actual content based around objective points] are relevant to purchasing decisions- a developer's habits toward bugs or updates, pricing trends, attitude toward consumers, etc, can all be extremely valuable information when deciding whether or not to purchase a game. Something that isn't helpful to one person may be helpful to another, so we can't objectively dismiss any review offered with actual consideration and distinct basis.
In this situation, however, it's clear that the impact of the reviews isn't at all of a proper magnitude to the issue at hand. It'd certainly be nice if we could get reviews sorted by their scope.. but that's so far beyond the scope of Valve's usual efforts that we may as well be asking for Valve to give us free money. :P

Of course, "yay bigotry!" "dis game bad" "i lik3 dis game!" "i got cancer" "bewbeez!" "Some random meme!" "I don't like this minor, gameplay-irrelevant nuance, so I hate the entire game!" and "I didn't actually play this game, but I'm going to negatively review it just based off vague expectations and prejudices!" reviews are still by far the more dominant issue in game reviews, being that they're a perpetual (and poorly moderated) addition. For anything else, the reviews (no matter how bad they may be) clear up over time assuming the developer resolves the circumstance for the future. The shift in review content and review score for Arkham Knight and No Man's Sky serve as examples of that trend.

Everyone evaluates cost-time benefits carefully according to their means. For example, waiting a few hours to hit Sonic for half-off drinks or Dairy Queen for BOGO Blizzards is appealing to some but not others, and everyone can be satisfied with their purchasing due to the consistency of the promotion. Using DQ to further the metaphor, if you go to the counter to pick up your blizzard and then see the next customer in line get a second one for free even though it's still an hour before the promotion timeframe, you might be a bit irked that you weren't offered the same deal.

While your perspective is the most reasonable one in a general sense, gamers do make purchasing decisions off of an established pattern of sales- that being, normally games don't meaningfully go on sale until 3 to 6 months after launch, and then don't go on sale for more than 30% off. While there's some variation to that, and a general sense of unpredictability to sales, it's nevertheless rather clear that someone who isn't willing to wait 3 months for 30% off may feel rather differently about 1 month and 50% off.

Hence, while your perspective is the correct one from a consumer's perspective [that is to say, you should never purchase anything unless you've carefully evaluated the cost-benefit ratio and determined the cost to be worth the benefit; following that, you shouldn't typically be in a situation to regret a purchase], the publisher did in fact betray consumer trust by engaging in an action that came across as deceptively counter-intuitive. Ergo, it's still possible to reasonably be upset about the matter, even without actually disagreeing about the amount spent.

Think of it as being akin to a microtransaction game which always lets you get new content (and the benefits of playing such early) before releasing the content for free a year later; However, in this circumstance, they released the content for free a month later. Obviously, the scope and nuances of that example differ, but the perspective is the same- that is, the purchasers bought with a certain expectation, and feel like their trust was betrayed because of an unpredictable, unexpected deviation to normal progression.

I don't know where the hype was, but the game was a top seller on Steam for a couple of weeks.