2023.1 on Raspberry Pi 3B+ - Auto login issues

Hi all, I hope this is in the right area {apologies if not!}.

I have :
Kali GNU/Linux Rolling
Kernel: Linux 5.15.44-Re4son-v8+
arm64

nothing special on the hardware, RPI3B+ (official power input) and a clean build of the above OS.

Problem I am having is trying to get it to boot (CLI) automatically into an account (root account). I have tried everything I know and googled the rest, a lot of older suggestions that don't seem to work. No errors specifically, just not auto logging in.
Clearly I am missing something, any help would be good!

I have tried:
Editing lightdm.conf
Editing lightdm-autologin
updating/installing kali-root-login
having a password for the root account (and log-in manually to ensure it actually works)
creating a user and putting them into the root group (and then doing all the above with that user (instead of "root").
and so much more... hours of google and stumbling around in the dark... time to actually ask someone for help!

If no help, I will try an older version on Kali (where there seems to be a lot of help for this topic) and take it from there...
Thanks!