Stuck after upgrade to Sonoma

Hey! I’ve done lots of research but no clear answers or path forward — hoping someone here can help?

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro which was already on Ventura through OpenCore and that was a success, so I thought the upgrade to Sonoma would be just as smooth as I’m now familiar with the intricacies of the patcher.

Everything was fine until I had to reboot after some driver, etc. updates for the graphics, which I expected to have to do. Now when I go to log in, it accepts my password then the progress bar gets stuck at the exact same spot and doesn’t budge.

I’ve tried booting into safe mode, repairing the disk, I’ve even made a new Sonoma install drive through the OpenCore app on another Mac I have access to. But that last bit fails because my drive is apparently a few hundred MBs over the needed capacity to reinstall 😑😑

I’m happy to wipe my drive and start again, as I did a Time Machine backup of my Mac right before installing Sonoma, but that’s long and tedious and most importantly, I don’t want to accidentally brick the computer by removing something that I shouldn’t improperly.

Can someone who’s a bit more knowledgeable than me (I’ve hit my limit with this) help? Happy to provide more info etc, either here in the comments or in DMs

Thanks 😄