I've finished the first volume of Pokemon Adventures now so I'll post my thoughts here. I first read Pokemon Adventures 5 or 6 years ago back in high school and at the time I thought it was amazing. A darker and deeper take on the story from the first generations games and its own stylized art style that adds some character. Coming back to it now, I think the art style still has its unique charm and it's quite visually pleasing, personally I think it looks better than the anime, so no complains here.
So far the first volume follows the adventure from Pallet Town up to the Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town, at this point of the game the player would have already collected three gym badges, so the first volume covers a significant part of the game. The manga mostly follows key set pieces from the games such as the towns, Mt. Moon, Meeting Bill and so on. At times the chapters can feel a bit disjointed since it jumps to place to place at times without a clear transition between scenes but if you have played the games you should be able to know what's going on.
The main driver for Red, our main protagonist, in this manga is to catch them all which is slightly different than the games which you also gotta catch them all but also collect gym badges and defeat the Elite Four to become the champion. I would have liked if they have taken more liberties with this difference because Red is still going from town to town as if he were collecting gym badges but he's not, instead it would have been nice to have more chapters in caves or forests looking for Pokemon.
Now the main problem I have so far are the characters. So far we've been introduced to a number of characters who just aren't very interesting. Red is your typical cocky mild-mannered protagonist, the rival is a bit of a stick in the mud and hostile to Red for no real reason and the Gym leaders are just kind of there. There is a lot of potential here such as why is Lt. Surge suddenly a thug, what's the story behind Misty, how did Bill become a Pokemon scientist. But the manga doesn't explore any of that potential thus far and along with that, character development is relatively minimal. The trainers already all start off fighting like pros, Red, a rookie, manages to take out a whole bunch of Team Rocket grunts all on his own, while Misty, a gym leader, couldn't stand a chance. Later on when Misty tries to teach Red a lesson, to stop being so arrogant, the whole scene just breaks down and Red doesn't learn anything from that experience, the whole thing is just sort of forgotten about in the next chapter. I think some better writing here could have gone a long way.
It might be a bit hard to recommend at this point if you're not a Pokemon fan but if you are and can gloss over some of its issues, it is a fun read that puts a new twist on the story. My future posts won't nearly be as detailed or long as this one unless there are new issues that come up, or are fixed at least I hope not. 
