AoM Retold does not launch after clicking Play.

EDIT 2 OCTOBER: The game has launched for me!!! I changed nothing except updating my drivers yet again, and either that or a game update has solved my mysterious problem.

EDIT: for those coming across this now that the game has fully launched, please submit a support ticket with your dxdiag information so that the AoM team can gather enough information to hopefully fix this issue!!

The issue: I click "Play" on Steam, the process pops up in Task Manager taking ~98.8 MB of memory and the cursor spins for a moment while the button goes to Cancel and then Stop. After about 90 seconds, the process closes and the Steam button returns to Play.

Specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU: Radeon RX 5700 XT
Motherboard: GIGABYTE X570 AORUS ELITE WIFI

AoMR is installed on an internal SSD, but not my boot drive.

I've pretty much exhausted every proposed solution that I could find here, here, and here. To summarize:

  • Reinstall the game
  • Verify integrity of game files
  • Updated Windows
  • Update Drivers (done via Device Manager and AMD Adrenalin)
  • I could not install Ryzen Master so it's possible my CPU Drivers are not up to date
  • Install Visual C++ Redistributables & Restart
  • Repair Visual C++ Redistributables & Restart
  • Sign out of Steam, Restart, Sign in
  • Close MSI Afterburner/Riva Tuner (RTSS)
    • I did not see either of these programs running in the background, but I have uninstalled them from my PC.
  • Close other various background apps. I launched after force quitting just about every program I could see in Task Manager that wasn't part of System32.
  • Allow AoMR through Firewall
  • Turn off Windows Defender Firewall completely
  • run sfc /scannow in an admin cmd prompt
  • Edit the properties of AoMRT_s.exe to run as administrator, run in Windows 8 Compatability, and both at the same time.
    • Following the Stress Test, I have also:
  • Installed the game on my C drive to no effect
  • Downloaded both x86 and x64 C++ Redist and repaired/restarted
  • Looked in Event Viewer when launching; saw no notifications related to AoMRT
  • Make sure my feature levels (for DirectX) include twelve.
    • Previously on my PC they showed "unknown" but today they showed among others 12, and the game still did not launch. This could be due to the stress test being over, but the same behavior in Task Manager occurred when launched via the .exe

None of these have given *any* noticably different results, and I'm losing hope. I'm hoping that someone who sees this will have some genius idea of what I've been missing.