Sega's English translation's pretty bad. Hopefully a translation group gets around to doing the second and third scenarios (a retranslation of the first would be nice, but I'm not going to hold my breath). Other than Shining the Holy Ark, SF 3 is my favorite game in the Shining series, and I haven't played the game when the story really gets rolling yet.
Two's pretty nice, but a lot of the characters are worthless (especially the hidden ones, who are mostly wimps without a lot of training).