So after doing some more research, the difference here comes into play inside SimpleValue#buildAttributeConverterTypeAdapter.

Prior to HHH-12135 Closed , we simply built the attribute converter adapter by taking the database type identified by the converter's generic type and directly looked up the jdbc type code and converted that to a SqlTypeDescriptor. In other words, we took java.sql.Date which yielded jdbc type code 91 and thus a descriptor of DateTypeDescriptor. But after HHH-12135 Closed we altered this process by injecting one additional step where we lookup the converter's generic type in the JavaTypeDescriptorRegistry first. This leads us going from java.sql.Date to a jdbc type code of 93 thus a descriptor of JdbcDateTypeDescriptor.

At least this gives some background as to why this regression appeared. I agree we probably want to maintain the JavaTypeDescriptorRegistry lookup here; however it does introduce a backward compatibility problem for users pre-5.3. But having said that, I believe I agree with your PR to address the fix here.