Turning into metal is in all the subsequent games too, I'm pretty sure.

There are fundamental aspects of a game where if you don't like it, you won't like the game, and you can't really avoid needing to roll, block, or parry attacks some of the time (though you virtually never need to do any one of them and can often just walk out of harm's way). If you don't want to do any single one of those then yeah, playing the game is silly and you'll have a bad time. That said, there are still lots of other elements to builds, like different types of casting and such, that give it more diversity.

I've beaten DS1 without rolling or parrying a single time, just blocking and repositioning, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone, but I thought it was fun.