If you have a moderality complex UI, by making it responsive you are going to ruin it. That's why most serious websites with complex UIs don't bother with responsiveness and have two different interfaces.
This could be debated, atomic components within a framework built for a purpose can still be responsive.
Responsive or adaptive should be choice made at the start of projects and then ideally followed through till the end.
We choose responsive and made atomic components so it can work, but... it has to be in the thought process from design to implementation, the same can be said about adaptive.
Source: Our UI is complex, large, responsive and serves 3 million users and won awards.
