You remind me of myself, some years ago. About 2 years ago, I finished my first "big" game (Fight'N Rage)... it tooks me 3.5 years to make it, and after the 2 first years, I was pretty confused, and frustrated too. My head was a mess... a combination of depression, anxiety and confusion... I litterally didn't know how to keep going... I was testing a lot of mechanics, and every thing I was doing just sucked. But I learned something from that... something that I resist to believe every single day: EVERYTHING you do, just will suck... at least at start. We live in a world where everything you see from others is a finished product, but you are seeying your own metamorphosis between an unfinished product into a finished one. In that situation, is easy to just "ask for permission" while examine other games, it's ok, and it's natural, just don't forget that other games were unfinished products too, and certainly they sucked (just play beta roms of good games... the streets of rage 2 beta for example, it really sucks!). Don't forget that us, as a rational human beigns, we are better on fixing things, than create things. So, the best you can do, if you really want to keep moving forward and finish your game, is just keep creating and fixing things. Create new things just forces you to fix those things... create bad things, and fix those bad things in order to make them good. Art and originality raises from mistakes, just forget about confidence... keep creating bad things, and then keep working hard in order to fix them into good things. Thinking in that way, helps me a lot to finish my first "big" game.
By the way... your game looks amazing. =)
Thanks man, you're absolutely right with everything you said! Sometimes it's hard to look past a finished product and realize the amount of time and effort it took to get it to that state. I'll keep working away at what I've got and hopefully it'll work out. I've gotten this far by doing that!
Also, great work on Fight 'N Rage! I bought it a while back on Steam and it's very impressive and professional. Feels just like a real arcade game :)