In Timespinner, your main way to attack is with Melee Orbs. Here are the best ones.
The game Timespinner has a lot to say about war. Its plot is a tangled mess of wrath and forgiveness, told in two different times. Its main character, Lunais, is pulled in different ways by the people she meets and the truths she tells. She has trouble figuring out what the violence she does to her enemies means.
Violence is a big part of Timespinner game, and Lunais’s growing collection of weapons shows that. Melee Orbs are the game’s weapons, and they range from modern weapons to old magic. Each one gives you a different way to fight off the many enemies in your way. Regardless of how you feel about violence, some of these choices are better than others. Here are the ten best tools that Lunais has in her magic toolbox.
Blue Orb
The Blue Orb is the first item you’ll find on your quest. It was given to Lunais by her mother Selen in the game’s tutorial. Don’t be fooled by how early it is in the game, though. This Melee Orb is strong and has a lot of promise, even later in Timespinner game.
Here, the move is a quick, close-range hit with the orb. Even when raised up a lot, this doesn’t do much damage. Its power comes from how quickly it attacks. With two of these, you can hit enemies close up quickly and repeatedly. When you combine that with the Bleak Ring, which makes your hits do more damage the more you chain them together, even the strongest bosses will fall if you find the right opening.
Blade Orb
The Blade Orb is something that fans of the “vania” part of Metroidvania should be familiar with. It is given to you after you beat the Feline Sentry, Timespinner game’s first boss. Its move is an overhead swing that can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.
The fact that this Orb’s attack comes from above is a big plus, since it lets you hit enemies from above, in front of, and at an angle. This Orb can be used in many different ways, and it does much more damage than the starting Blue Orb. This makes it a good choice in the early to middle game.
Plasma Orb
Even though sending lightning bolts at your enemies like Emperor Palpatine might make you wonder if you’re really the nice guy, the Plasma Orb lets you do just that. After beating the boss Aelana the Great, about halfway through the game, you can get the Plasma Orb. It plays very differently from most of the other Melee Orbs in the game.
First of all, using it costs Aura, which is a drawback you’ll have to deal with as you play. Second, it hits almost at random and doesn’t always hit close enemies when it should. When you combine these two things, you get a wild weapon that makes up for its unpredictability with power and range. The Plasma Orb can hit almost anything on the screen and do a lot of damage.
Gun Orb
Even though it’s been done before and makes sense in this game because it’s partly set in the future, it’s still strange to see the main character of a Metroidvania game just pull out a gun and start shooting enemies. But once you pick up the Gun Orb in the Military Hangar area, you can do exactly that.
This Orb has a great range and a lot of damage, but it can only shoot straight ahead. This makes it useful in fewer situations. It’s a great Orb to have set up in your secondary or tertiary slots because it’s useful in certain situations, but you probably won’t want to use it as your main Orb for general exploration and fighting.
Shattered Orb
The Shattered Orb is a fast-firing short-range weapon like the Blue Orb. You can find it in the first area of the game, Lake Desolation, after burning down some young plants in the past so they don’t get in your way now. Once you have it, it’s a great addition to your arsenal. It works a lot like the Blue Orb, so it goes well with Blue Orb builds.
The main difference between the two Orbs is that the Shattered Orb does more damage than the Blue Orb, but each hit does less damage than one hit from the Blue Orb. This makes it harder to use at first because not every hit is sure to land, but it becomes much more useful as the game goes on and you increase the Orb’s base damage.
Iron Orb
The Iron Orb is just a big metal hammer, which is a great example of the saying “simple but effective.” You can find it in the Castle Ramparts area when you’re attacking the castle in the past. Once you find it, you’ll have one of the best blunt damage sources in Timespinner game.
This Orb’s overhead swings are great for hitting a wide range of enemies, and its high damage is great for quickly wearing down bosses. The only bad thing about this weapon is that it attacks slowly, which makes sense given what it is, but still makes it less effective.
Wind Orb
The Wind Orb is a very fast orb that only hits the area right in front of Lunais. It is the most extreme example of the “close range but fast” type of weapon in this game. This makes using the Wind Orb a risk/reward situation: if you’re sure you can avoid damage at very close range, this is the best tool in the game for getting a lot of hits.
You can find the Wind Orb early on in the Caves of Banishment. This gives you a lot of time to learn how to play with its tricky controls. If you can do that and pair it with a passive item like the Bleak Ring, you can become a boss-killing machine later in the game.
Empire Orb
The Empire Orb is likely one of the last Orbs you’ll find in Timespinner. You get it after beating the “final boss,” Emperor Nuvius, and it gives you a set of giant fists that you can use to beat up enemies. The hitboxes on these hands are great, and they reach a good distance away from Lunais to give them a strong range. They also do a lot of damage.
If you use some Elemental Beads to raise the level of this Orb after you get it, it can become a useful tool for the last few parts of the endgame, letting you deal good damage at a steady rate. So, it is a good prize for beating the hard boss Emperor Nuvius.
Forbidden Tome
The Forbidden Tome is one of the best Melee Orbs in the game. It is a prize for beating the optional boss Ifrit in the Temporal Gyre. This is because of the way it attacks: first, the blade swings in an angle like the Blade Orb, and then it shoots out in front of you like the Gun Orb.
This set of moves that can be used in two different ways gives you a lot of options and makes it easy to fight different kinds of enemies. It also does a lot of damage, making it one of the best Orbs for general use in Slope Game and a must-have for New Game Plus and Nightmare runs.
Radiant Orb
The Radiant Orb is one of the easier Orbs to miss, since you get it when you beat Cantoran at the end of Haristel’s long quest chain. However, it is well worth the trouble of finding it. Its strike is a burst of light that goes out in a circle from Lunais and hurts everything around her. Even though it has a pretty short range, the fact that it can shoot in any direction means that it will hit a surprising number of enemies.
Because of this and the fact that it attacks quickly, it’s easy to spam this orb as you move through an area, and you rarely have to stop to kill enemies you missed. This is a great Orb overall because it does a lot of damage and has a great attack style.
