What is the best polygon reduction software available ?
What are your experiences with them ?
Most apps have decent solutions built in. If you don’t have one in your 3D app, try MeshLab.
I personally try to model as low as possible and then add in more polygons later if I want to up the detail. I know it’s hard, but if you are not using something like Mudbox or zBrush, learning how to model with low polygons is really the best way to get it done. (I know, not really helpful, but just a suggestion.)
This software is more hardware, and is called Artist. Good modeling is the best polygon reduction method 
Besides that, i would go with Retopo instead polygon reduction. Because Polygon reduction algorithms usually ends in a tri meshflow.
I was going to say the best software is the human brain. Look at your model critically, identify unnecessary vertices, remove and re-make the polygons by hand.
That said, I’m nowhere near the caliber of the “real” artists in this thread, so take my thought with a grain of salt.
Modeling low polygon meshes isn’t too bad. Here is my latest model that I started from scratch and am slowly building up:
I started out with a reference image I found of the internet and traced its outline from the side. Then extruded it twice to get a general form and then just pushed pulled, extruded and nudged my model to be what you see here. It’s not an easy skill to learn and you need to hone your eyes so you can see all the little details and know where to generalize things. You have to be part artist to do this well.
not trying to sound rude but the model you show us here MakerOfGames is a mess. many n-gons, bad topo and no poly-flow.
look at THIS
decimation tools are not good for models that are organic. for static objectives they may work, but will never be as effective as yourself.
Thanks for the link and critique, but I will say again it is still just a work in progress. Thus, its still being heavily modified. Perhaps I shall start a thread to get some more feedback on it. I am by no means a great 3d artist, but I thought it was at least a good start. At least when looking at it from all angles in my modeler it seems to have good visual form, which is really all I care about at the end of the day. I work in n-gons and then hand prune the triangles myself to maximize each surface. Does it make the mesh pretty? No, but it gets the job done for visuals that I think look good.
Perhaps you could PM me what bad topo and poly-flow is as I have never heard those terms before. Any pointers would be appreciated. 
So I decided to work a little more on my model and hope this is a better example of what I meant. Maybe my fine tuning and triangulation have helped it some. All hand modeled and hand placed verticies, started from scratch and no higher polygon version of this model exists.
Info: Only 654 Triangles as is. The complete models should probably come out around 2,000 polygons at my guess and no more than 4,000 with the gear attached(guns, armor, helmet etc) . A low polygon model compared to most modern games having well over 5,000 per model. (HL2 used around 7,500 per character for full LOD, so it should come out at just above half the number of polygons used by HL2 which released in 2004, so I am sure I will be below half for today’s standards, which is a goal of mine.)
EDIT: The image is large, so you may have to click on it again to see it at 100% size.
You can also try to learn sculpting your model in Zbrush or Mudbox. After that you can use Topogun to do a low poly retopology of the model.
or use blender and make everything for free
Blender works pretty well, even though you may not get your model back out in the format you intended,.( Free)
There is something called Balancer and Balancer Lite, particular to the OBJ file format. /
Daz Studio has a decimator wich works wonderfully (if it doesn't crash)./
Mesh Lab is good but who the heck can find real good mesh lab tutorials with such skittish documentation (Free)
Carrara 7 pro has a decimator works well. / Free.
Hope this helps.
What did you mean by this? I’m hoping to use blender to test out some things so would appreciate some clarification, thanks.
Blender is my main modeling app, no issues here with Unity.
Although you can reduce polys in Blender (and the others) the results usually aren’t very good once you start getting below 80% or higher reduction. At that point, I usually have to decide whether it is faster / better to manually reduce the mesh or just create a new one from scratch.
Nice quick reply to ease my mind before I sleep, thanks ^^
For Cinema4D:
What would be the best way to reduce polygons in 3D Max ?