PS5 Constant Combat Freezes

I made this post last week, but got very little engagement, so reposting for visibility so I can get some help.

I’m getting damn near constant combat freezes on all my turns and all enemy turns. It always happens when an attack or effect is applied, and it freezes the game for a good 5 seconds to upwards of an entire minute or longer. Sometimes even the audio freezes. This is especially egregious for characters that make 5+ attacks a turn, plus effects. My Bladedancer/Pyro/Executioner’s turns can take upwards of 10 minutes to complete as a result of the freezing. It’s gotten to the point where if a combat actually runs smoothly for a few turns it feels strange.

I’ve done in-game bug reports, I’ve cleared my PS5 cache, I’ve reinstalled the game, changed loadouts (goodbye heavy bolter 😭), done quicksave/quickloads during encounters, toggling Inventory/Menu/Console Dashboard. Nothing helps.

Act 1 and 90% of Act 2 ran so well, and I fell in love with this game, but end of Act 2 all the way to Act 4 now this issue has become steadily worse. It’s beyond frustrating and makes combats drag on many times longer, and just destroys my enjoyment of the game. It’s unacceptable to have this level of poor optimization for a game that’s been released to console for this long.

If there’s no way to fix this issue, I’m considering shelfing this game for good. Which sucks. I love the game, the setting, and writing, and how crunchy the builds are- all the things I loved about WoTR. But man… this game is nearly impossible to play in this state.