I also encountered the issue with the login to a newly installed WIndows 2022 server VM.
What worked was to install VMware's VMRC on the local client. Note that instead of "ctrl alt del" you'll have to use "ctrl alt ins".
Regarding licensing, binaries are the same, and it's only a matter of entering the license key. That said, I'm not sure whether the current ESXi version already works with the new core licenses.
André