Nope, there was a decent amount of updates and one of them being an update to a new runtime of Ren'py so old saves are borked.
Game still runs on 8.1.3.
The update you are talking about is to allow it to run on 8.2+ if
**you** want it to. The game itself is still built on 8.1.3 since that's the highest JOI-Play has plugins for.
I'm still using a save that was started pre 8.2 compatability with zero issues.