In Impress:

"Delay between characters" does not work. Impress should animate each character
or word individual, instead it animates them all at once

Steps

Create text in an empty page "This is a test". Custom animation, click to
"appear". In the effect tab select "letter by letter", right above delay between
characters. 

Does not work. I tried this in power point and it did work. Then imported that
power point presentation into impress. Impress recognized the animation and set
up the effect for letter by letter animation, but it did not work