I had the exact same experience. I might even have some comments on an old HN account complaining about HA's disregard for upgrade stability. After another broken upgrade, I finally decided to just fix my install at a certain update in March 2022 and leave it there. I left it there for over a year, until I wanted a few newer features. I carved out a chunk of my weekend to make sure I had time to fix whatever broke with everything and... nothing broke after catching up on a full year of updates. It's now faster, just as reliable, and has more features than before.

Home Assistant is finally ready for primetime in the average technical user's home.