The single biggest issue XCOM 2 has is the overwhelming amount of short but very aggravating delays that leave the camera staring in to nothing while the game slowly composes itself and finally continues on with the action.
Initially I thought this was due to my hardware imitating Homer Simpson and simply flopping on the ground in exertion but as it turns out almost all of it can be removed through the use of the amazing "Stop Wasting My Time" mod. Here's the list of issues the mod can address:
Combat changes:
- Removed 1-3 sec pause after shooting, throwing grenades, abilities, etc.
- Removed 1 sec pause after getting a kill
- Removed 2.75 sec pause after going into cover
- New! Reduced pauses from reanimating corpses and unburrowing chryssalids by 80%
- New! Removed unskippable Bradford voiceovers:
- 1, 3, and 6 turns remaining warnings
- Civilians dying warning
- New! Reduced revealed enemies cinematic time
- Increased unit movement speed by ~10% (Lowered by popular demand - can be reduced back to normal under Options --> Gameplay --> Unit Movement Speed)
- Removed 33% slowdown of enemies not being attacked during overwatch slowmo (enemies being attacked are unaffected)
Non-combat changes:
- Increased the speed of the Avenger on the global map
- Reduced the fade-in time of the horrendously slow color picker
Keep in mind that when you're dealing with mods, especially those as far-reaching as this one, to ensure that you back up your save files because there is a countless amount of things that can go wrong in a wide variety of ways. The last thing anyone wants to see after booting up a game is their only save file being corrupted so do exercise a touch of caution and create a copy of your save.
That aside, the fact that this mod even exists means that Firaxis either intended for those combat pauses to exist or they are the product of a bug so major it couldn't be fixed without causing terrible damage to the stability of XCOM 2.
Whatever the reason I do hope this issue gets officially patched out of XCOM 2 in the near future because you simply can't expect every single player to know about the mods existence and the mod itself running without a hitch on all versions of the game.