Shameless plug: I had a similar impression when looking at nMigen, but wasn't super happy with Verilog either, so I wrote a new HDL called Wyre [0]. No metaprogramming, but a Verilog-like language with a focus on ergonomics instead. I'm currently making a basic Minecraft clone for the Lattice iCE40 with it.
[0] https://github.com/nickmqb/wyre