Oh does it not add new entries for every new DXVK release anymore?

Looks like the last time a verb for a new DXVK version was added was dxvk2010 or DXVK 2.1, in February this year. We're up to DXVK 2.3 now. Because the Winetricks codebase is around 20,000 lines of shellscript and I'm not the best at reading shellscript...I don't think the dxvk verb updates the Wineprefix's DXVK version based on what the newest version is. I think that's just an alternate way of installing DXVK; you can pull the latest stable release, or you can install a particular version.

I think executing a particular verb for a DXVK version would override whatever DXVK dlls you currently have installed in that prefix, too. I have no idea how to check what DXVK version is installed a particular Wineprefix, though.

even though it says DXVK (Latest) and that it’s from year 2023

That's based on the verb metadata; not what version of DXVK you currently have installed. A contributor bumped the year for the dxvk verb from 2017 to 2023 in a commit in February this year.

Oh I had no idea about this, and I normally just use winetrick’s GUI while using it so I would’ve had to look up how to update dxvk if not for you explaining it.

Happy if it helps. I've never used the GUI, but it's awesome that they managed to create a functioning GUI frontend with shellscript. Insane, really. God I hate shellscript...

So far I haven’t had an issue with DXVK being too old, but I mostly play older games

You probably won't get an issue with DXVK being "too old", but newer versions of DXVK implement more features (particularly for D3D12) and include bug fixes to improve compatibility or performance. From the 2.3 release notes:

Fixed a minor issue with D3D9 feedback loop tracking.

Test Drive Unlimited 2: Fixed shadows on grass.

Tomb Raider Anniversary: Improved performance.

So you want to be running the latest version for better compatibility. That said, I mostly play visual novels. My biggest problems are still DRM and media playback, which DXVK has very little to do with.

Unrelated but I’ll check that guide out, I’ve had trouble playing VNs that are in Japanese, as without LANG="ja_JP.UTF-8" wine /path/to/game.exe they won’t even run but even with it the fonts don’t work and are shown as empty boxes.

You're the exact person this guide was written for! This sounds like an issue that's easily fixed by installing fakejapanese with winetricks. More info here: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#japanese_characters_aren_t_displaying_properly

And if you have .txt files in the game directory (like documentation or whatever) with garbled text, that's probably because they're encoded in Shift JIS. There's an easy fix to make them readable: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#text_files_with_garbled_text

(That last one had me scratching my head for a very long time)