Samurai Warriors

The way this game was reviewed is misleading. I've played the Samurai Warriors series since its beginning, and it's not really anything like the way it's described here. First off, the weapons aren't always a "samurai sword that's always razor-sharp and ready to inflict harm on villains". One of the characters fight with a wooden ball attatched to a toy hammer for goodness sakes. And as for educational value, this game has at least a minimal amount of it. The game's based off actual events in Japan's civil war era (although there's fiction added to make it entertaining). Also, there is ZERO blood throughout the entire game. Gameplay is simple. The only things you need are the square and triangle buttons and a joystick, along with an appreciation for mindless gameplay and you can play.

This game is absolutely educational--since most of the characters are actual historical figures and most of the missions are battles that really took place, it could seriously get your teen interested in Japanese history. Being a fighting game, it's necessarily violent, but no more or less so than the average fighting game, and there's really no blood.

I played this game when I was twelve, and it was a blast. The second one's good too. It also helped with a report that I did on the samurai when I was thirteen.