Problem with XV's combat is they designed it around the concept of holding a button to attack. If they had actually mapped each attack for each single button press, or a proper dial-a-combo structure, it would feel much better. I agree right now it's not as satisfying as it can be, but I don't agree it's mostly due to animations. Moreover, the transitional animations aren't much of a problem as they created separate attack animations that acts as the transitional animation itself.
They can also speed up the animation to make up for any other transitional delays, which is basically what Armiger does.
Same quick transitional reactions for movement at high speed.
A lot people seem to be looking at DMC but that game's combat is designed around animation canceling for quickly racking up high combos, not a fair comparison. On the other hand, Ninja Gaiden Black easily still has one of the most impressive and realistic animations and also one of the most responsive controls in the action genre. The game also actually forces you to wait out the combo animation to finish before you can even dodge or start a new attack string, but I doubt anyone would consider this game sluggish or unresponsive.