I recently moved The Last Cartographer development environment to Godot 4.7.2.
Engine upgrades are successful when the player never notices them and development gets easier afterward.
An engine upgrade is one of those jobs that sounds simple right up until a project has enough custom systems to make every small compatibility change interesting. The game now has a large interaction layer, journals, conversations, save/load, development tools, NPC behavior, assisted mode, room navigation and a lot of UI built over many point releases.
My reason for upgrading was not to chase a version number. I wanted a cleaner base for the next stage of the project, especially the move toward GLB character models and a more formal renderer/animation adapter.
The upgrade also forced useful cleanup. A few older methods and assumptions needed to be revisited. Some UI code that had survived because it happened to work had to be made more explicit. Those moments are annoying while they happen, but they usually reveal exactly where a system was too fragile.
I am continuing to test the project room by room rather than assuming that opening the title screen means everything survived. Navigation, save/load, journal tabs, interaction hotspots, assisted-mode visibility, NPC movement and dialogue all need regression testing because an adventure game is a web of state rather than a single gameplay loop.
The version number is not the interesting part for players. The interesting part is what it enables next: cleaner GLB integration, better animation handling, stronger development tools and a more maintainable Windows build.
That is the theme of this stage of development. Less patching around old assumptions. More foundation I can trust.