I've "solved" this, I just want to share my experience in case someone else has the same issue.
I installed Garuda temporarily to take it for a spin and decided to go with it. However, first I created some other partitions and then went to install Garuda from scratch again after I sorted out my other drives.
All of a sudden I started getting the spinning Garuda logo on boot, and would receive the same error regardless of the proprietary or free drivers.
setfont: KDFONTTOP: Invalid argument
I was really scratching my head until it occured to me... I hadn't actually removed my previous BTRFS partition, I was just trying to install over it and hope Garuda did this automagically.
After removing it in Gnome Disks, I was able to install again.
Lesson learned! If you don't remove your previous Garuda BTRFS partition before reinstalling, you could end up getting this error. Hope this helps someone!
