I mean, things happened and society+technology continued to evolve, but yeah, they were tough times, and people in Europe were poorer in goods and often (but not always!) lived leaner. You can argue about the political desirability of a shitty local warlord vs a greedy distant emperor, but a big empire is definitely better for industry and trade. And, while new technologies developed over time (punctuation, mechanical clocks ect.) a lot of technology was also lost in the transition; I’m going to go ahead and say new sewer systems and aqueducts would have made Medieval cities nicer to be in.

You can see this in reverse after the Mongol expansion, too. Eventually, the Greek Orthodox church packed up and moved to the booming cities under the Russian princes, subservient to a succession of various steppe hordes - despite the tough geography and climate, and the memory of the bloody expansion itself.

I’m not saying a giant self-interested autocracy is good, but I’m going to go ahead and say the end of it didn’t noticeably improve things, and democracy wouldn’t be an option for a long time. (The ancient republics were always of the elite)