Unable to Assert or Access Kafka Consumer Data

I have set up a Kafka Consumer using an API Test step and I can see the data returned from the topic under 'Received Data', but I cannot apply assertions or access the data using Get Data function. I saw that this was an issue dating back 3 years ago but the only resolution is a work around creating a consumer using groovy and the apache library.

Any thoughts on why this is not possible, and any solutions using the existing API Connection?